Study results published on youth mobile usage

A worldwide study by Nielsen researchers has revealed some interesting patterns in the differing trends of mobile phone usage amongst young people around the world.

The Nielsen study was carried out in 19 countries, with around 5,000 people polled on average in each nation, but results have only been made public for the U.S., U.K., India, Italy, Brazil, China, Spain, Russia and Germany.

In the U.S. in particular Nielsen gathered information from a massive sample of 75,000 young people, conducting one-on-one interviews and also allowing interviewees to complete the survey on the web.

The findings of the study highlight how much location and gender can dictate mobile user patterns. Chinese youngsters for example are frequent users of mobile web services with 73% of 15-24 year olds in China regularly using their handsets to get online.

Unlike the Chinese, however, Indian youngsters are not big on the mobile web, with only 13% of them saying they access the internet via their handsets.

In mainland Europe that figure amongst the same demographic drops to 25% of young people saying they are regular surfers on the mobile web, whilst half of British and American  youngsters claim to be frequent mobile web users.

As a global trend young women are more likely to send texts and MMS messages than young men, though that pattern is reversed in India where male youths send far more texts than their female compatriots.

Italians are big users of the latest generation mobiles, with 50% of them saying they have a smartphone. That pattern is often dictated by the availability of high end phones subsidised by mobile phone contracts with big suppliers, a luxury which consumers in many countries are not afforded.