A recently conducted research from The Nielsen Company shows that entertainment-themed websites are the most popular with mobile Internet users in the growing Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) mobile markets. This stands in stark contrast with the more mature American and European markets, where information and news draw the most attention from mobile Internet browsers.
According to the report findings, entertainment, gaming, and music websites rank among the top five categories visited in all four BRIC countries, but do not have a place among the top US and Europe rankings. Email, weather, news, and search are the top categories for both American and European mobile.
In India, while games top the website category list with 38%, email comes a close second with 33%. Entertainment, music and sports take up the next three slots with 21%, 18% and 15% respectively.
Amongst internet users in the US, entertainment, music, and games place eighth, ninth, and tenth respectively. The findings suggest that mobile Internet users across BRIC countries are more reliant on mobile phones to provide them with entertainment content, while users across the United States and Europe view their devices as a resource for information.
"In the U.S. and Europe, broad access to media and entertainment has been available for decades through a large fixed distribution infrastructure, and more recently in specialized devices like iPods, to meet consumers' entertainment needs," said Jeff Herrmann, vice president of mobile media at Nielsen. "Users in the growing Brazil, Russia, India, and China markets haven't had the benefit of broad-based content distribution thereby limiting their exposure, and are filling the service gap by embracing mobile's transition into a personal entertainment platform."
The data comes from the Mobile Media Marketplace report released by Nielsen. Nielsen now measures mobile behavior in BRIC countries to provide a consistent global view of mobile market development and the growth of mobile media consumption.
