Mobile is not a device: Part Deux

As part two (part 1 here) in an unplanned series highlighting the inevitable march toward one mobile, anytime, anyplace, anyone screen, I bring you...the Worldwide State of the Mobile Web!

Well, not me actually, but those traditions-in-transition media mavens at Neilsen.

They've just released their report 'Critical Mass: the Worldwide State of the Mobile Internet report' and it contains a few interesting numbers:

• 40 Million Americans now use their mobile devices to access the internet...that's a world- leading 15% of the US mobile subscriber base.
  
• The most popular device for using the interwebs is the lowly Motorola RAZR at 10% followed by the sure to grow iPhone at 4%.
  
• Median age of a mobile internet user is a too-old-to-rock and roll, too-young-to-die 35.

And what do people go online for when they are mobile? Why many of the same things they do when they are immobile and online:

• Email
• Weather
• News
• Search
• Maps
• Sports
• Entertainment (the un sports kind)
• Videos (the unentertainment kind)
• Music

You can get the full PDF for yourself here

The report's title hints at other elements that butter Neilsen's bread: namely, they suggest that the critical mass of mobile internet users is now in place for mobile advertising.

To their credit, they identify the general challenges to mobile advertising such as the lack of receptivity among people to mobile advertising (86% say it's not okay with them).

Neilsen falls back on concepts like inventory availability, demographics and the need for planning tools to see a rose-tinted future nearby where consumers 'warm to the idea' of advertising as part of their mobile experience. I guess it depends on the point of view.

Left to their own devices, mobile users would seem no more likely than non-mobile users of the internet to value interruptive, uninvited, irrelevant messages from impersonal marketers.