MUMBAI: comScore, which measures the digital world, has released an overview of mobile news access across the five European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK) using the comScore MobiLens service.
The study showed that nearly 37 per cent of smartphone users in EU5 reported accessing news sites via an app or browser in January 2012, showing an increase of 74 per cent over the past year. For EU5 smartphone users who accessed news sites on a near-daily basis, the growth rate was even stronger at 82 per cent. The UK showed the highest penetration with nearly half (46.8 per cent) of smartphone users reporting having accessed news sites at least once in the past month.
comScore Europe product manager for mobile Hesham Al-Jehani said, "The continued growth in smartphone adoption in Europe has fuelled the increasing consumption of news and information on-the-go. Today’s mobile consumer wants to be plugged into what’s happening around them every second of the day, and their smartphones are enabling them to do that. This rapidly changing trend brings with it significant incremental opportunity for news publishers to extend their audiences, but also the challenges of delivering their content effectively through the small screen."
Spain Shows Highest Growth in Smartphone News Audience: In EU5, smartphone users accessing news sites via an app or browser at least once a month increased 74 per cent to 39.5 million during the three month average ending January 2012. The near-daily smartphone news audience showed an even stronger increase of 82 per cent (12.7 million) during the same time period. The Spanish smartphone audience reported the strongest gains in this behaviour in the past year with a 127 per cent increase in monthly news access and a 160 per cent increase in near-daily news access.
Growth in News Access Amongst Smartphone Audience:
More than 1 in 3 EU5 Smartphone users access news sites monthly. In the three month average ending January 2012, 39.5 million EU5 smartphone users accessed news sites via an app or browser on a monthly basis, representing 36.9 per cent of the total EU5 smartphone audience. The UK showed the highest penetration for mobile news access for all usage frequencies, with 46.8 per cent of its smartphone audience accessing news at least once monthly
