Rising Economies hit Web with Phones.

Different ways of counting users yield different results.

Five of the world’s 10 largest cities are located in the fast-growing economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China (the so-called BRIC countries), along with four of the five top markets for new mobile subscribers.

Moreover, mobile is not simply viewed as an extension of the Web in BRIC, as it is in the US, Western Europe and parts of Asia-Pacific. Mobile is the Internet for an increasingly large and attractive consumer segment.

Less than 2% of mobile users in India accessed the Internet with their phone in Q1 2008, according to Nielsen Mobile’s “Mobile Media Marketplace” report.

Nicholas Covey, director of insights at Nielsen Mobile, told eMarketer that its penetration rates could be viewed as low when compared with official counts relased by national regulatory agencies, because such agencies reported numbers of lines and did not account for subscribers who had multiple phones. Mr. Covey added that Nielsen’s data was based on interviews of mobile users in major cities.

Indeed, eMarketer’s own estimates are benchmarked against official national agency counts, which put Indian mobile Internet penetration at more than one-third of its mobile user population for 2008.

“High mobile Internet penetration in the BRIC countries is all the more notable since none of them has yet launched third-generation (3G) mobile services, although each one has either licensed 3G services or will do so by 2009,” said John du Pre Gauntt, senior analyst at eMarketer. “Once that happens, marketers can expect even higher mobile Internet penetration rates, with the commensurate ability to conduct more sophisticated and widespread mobile marketing campaigns.”

Courtesy of http://www.emarketer.com