comScore: Almost 10 Percent in US, UK Now Doing Mobile Search

New mobile search data has just been released by comScore’s M:Metrics unit. Generally the data show mobile search penetration growing and frequency increasing. The market share data show Google as the dominant mobile search engine across six countries, with the US market being most competitive.

The U.K. saw the greatest percentage of mobile users accessing search at 9.5 percent. The US was next with 9.2 percent (but the actual subscriber numbers are greater). The EU average was 5.6 percent.

Here are the usage and market share figures from comScore:

These figures are not identical with mobile internet usage; they’re a subset. There are various numbers in the market associated with mobile Internet usage, from 15 percent (per Nielsen) to almost 30 percent.

Here are the US Nielsen Mobile search share figures:

Source: Nielsen Mobile (Q2, 2008)

In my research with Local Mobile Search I’ve also seen mobile search frequency at rates that are higher than those reported by Nielsen (8 per month) and comScore.

Putting all the particular numbers aside, mobile internet access and mobile search are clearly growing rapidly. Market share seems to be tracking the desktop pretty directly. However, according to Nielsen (May 2008), Yahoo Mail is the top mobile website, beating Google.