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Ipsos-Mori recently released a very interesting bit of research on British use of Mobile Technology and the Internet.  It mirrors what we at Next2Friends have believed for a long time: that both Mobile and Internet Technology will continue to grow and pervade society.

The study was carried out with more than 2000 participants located throughout Britain.  One of the most telling statistics was that since 1998 while the number of people using computers has risen to 47 percent from 35 percent, the number of mobile phone users has risen to a staggering 86 percent from 23 percent.  Nearly triple!

And internet use is continually on the rise with 40 percent of Britons having broadband at home and thousands spending as much as 30 hours a week online.  Half of people surveyed had bought plane tickets and 21 percent had downloaded music online as well.

The study did not look into rates of online usage from mobile, but there are indicators that these rates are lower than in the US due to the costliness of data plans in the UK.  A study by M:Metrics conducted in May of 2008 concluded that people in the UK use their mobile phones to access the internet half as much as people in the US.  This can impact the usage of some of the services offered by Next2Friends, particularly Next2Friends Live, but we hope the UK will continue more in the direction of the US by offering cheaper blanket data plans instead of charging by the kilobyte.  Clearly consumers in the UK would favor this!

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