Mobile internet era upcoming?
BEIJING, March 19 (Xinhuanet) -- The increasing of Google usage by mobile phone users in recent months may forecast the coming of the mobile Internet era is at hand.
Early evidence showing sharp increases in internet usage on phones, not just computers, has emerged from services Google has begun offering in recent months on Blackberry e-mail phones, Nokia devices for multimedia picture and video creators and business professionals and the Apple iPhone, Google said.
"We have very much hit a watershed moment in terms of mobile Internet usage," Matt Waddell, a product manager for Google Mobile, said in an interview. "We are seeing that mobile Internet use is in fact accelerating.
Google introduced a new software download for mobile phones running Microsoft Corp's Windows Mobile software that conveniently positions a Google web search window on the home screen of such phones.
The software shortcuts the time it takes for people to perform web searches on Google by eliminating initial search steps of finding a web browser on the phone, opening the browser, waiting for network access, and getting to Google.com.
"We are actually seeing a 20 percent increase in the number of searches by people," Waddell said.
Google's mobile plug-in software lets users customize their phones to feature Google mobile services instead of relying solely on software features network carriers have pre-installed on the devices.
"Faster is better than slow, especially on a mobile device, where fast is much better than slow," Waddell said. "Not only are we are seeing increased user satisfaction but also greater usage."
