Some 54% of people surfing the mobile Web come from outside the United States and Europe, according to stats from Bango, the mobile Web payment and analytics firm.
The top six countries accessing the mobile Web via Bango in January 2008 were the United Kingdom, at 25%; India at 11%; the United States at 10%; South Africa at 8%; Indonesia at 7%; and China at 6%. China has risen fast up the mobile Web surfing charts, from the 19th position six months ago to the 6th position today. In total, Bango detects mobile Web users from more than 190 countries.
“The mobile Internet is much more a global phenomenon than the desktop Internet,” says Anil Malhorta, co-founder and senior vice president of alliances and marketing at Bango. Perhaps it’s not surprising given there are more phones than PCs, but it’s easily overlooked.
Bango can help marketing firms determine if they are targeting the correct audience. For example, if a company is getting lot of visitors from Indonesia but doesn’t ship product there, they will want to rethink their strategy. “It kind of sounds self-evident,” he says, but a lot of mobile advertising companies don’t provide those types of insights.
The company says Bango Analytics operates as a hosted service, allowing mobile Website owners anywhere in the world to connect their sites to the Analytics service in minutes and start getting results.