Nearly 10 percent of traffic to UK newspaper websites comes from non-computer devices — that’s the highest in the world, according to comScore (NSDQ: SCOR) Device Essentials research in Ofcom’s International Communications Market Report 2011.
“However, newspaper site traffic to non-computer devices remains low across our comparator countries,” Ofcom says.
That means the UK is also the place where more consumers than anywhere access mobile news generally, not just websites — a whole quarter of consumers have done so, up from 15 percent just six months earlier…
“One factor that might contribute to the popularity of newspaper websites on mobile devices in the UK is the availability of mobile versions of newspaper websites,” Ofcom says.
“These mobile sub- sites format the width of the page and navigation to suit the smaller screens of mobile devices, while some newspapers offer mobile applications which allow the content of newspapers to be downloaded to mobile devices and read offline.
Eight of the top ten national newspaper websites in the UK had mobile-specific websites, and these eight sites accounted for 99% of page views of the top ten sites.”