Europe lags behind in connected phone use

Europe's mobile phone users are still well behind people in Japan and the US when it comes to using their phones to connect to the internet, according to the latest data. ComScore's comparative date between the three regions found that a whopping 75 per cent of phones in Japan were used to access what it terms 'connected media' ? namely web pages through a browser, applications that connect to a network or content that has been downloaded. That was well in excess of the US, on 43.7 per cent and far ahead of the Europe region with 38.5 per cent.Browser accessNerarly 60 per cent of Japanese phone users accessed their phone's browser in June, and 42.3 per cent an application compared to 25.8 per cent and 24.9 percent for Europe. However, Europe does lead the way in text messaging ? with 81.7 per cent of us sending an SMS compared to 66.8 per cent in the US and 40.1 per cent in Japan. "Mobile media usage continues to accelerate across the globe, driven by advancing technologies and the growing number of content options available to consumers," said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. Dramatic differences"As we look across markets, dramatic differences in mobile media consumption, brand adoption and user behavior become evident," he added. "These differences are even more pronounced than they are for PC-based Internet usage due to the complex nature of mobile ? including various device capabilities, operating systems and methods of accessing content."Of course, looping in the whole of Europe presumably gives a less clear picture than it would for just the Western European nations ? with the UK likely to report figures that are considerably higher than some of the less developed nations. Related StoriesMicrosoft and Adobe have secret meetingApple's new iPhone won't be the iPhone 5Full version of Angry Birds for Android delayedBlackBerry Storm 3 shelved by RIMAmazon planning own Android App MarketGoogle