Social Media Access Via Mobile Grows

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Mobile users are continuing to turn more frequently to their cell phones for social and gaming purposes, according to the latest data from analyst Comscore.

For the quarter ending in June, 36.9 percent of mobile users accessed a social networking site or blog on their handset, up almost a percentage point from 36.1 percent compared to the first quarter 2012.

Mobile gaming increased by the same amount, up from 32.6 percent to 33.4 percent quarter on quarter.

The numbers might only be slowly creeping up, but the overall pattern shows a greater proportion of mobile subscribers are using their handhelds for traditional desktop tasks.

The biggest growth areas for mobile content use were music and apps. Those using their handset to listen to music grew by 2.3 percent to 27.6 percent, while 51.4 percent have used a downloaded app, up from 50 percent last quarter.

But the humble text message is still by far the most popular use for mobile devices, with three quarters of users sending a text over the period. And SMS isn’t losing any of its popularity, growing 0.7 percent since March.

The news is not so rosy for certain mobile providers, with Comscore revealing that Research In Motion has dipped 1.6 percent to 10.7 percent in its share of smartphone subscribers, losing out to Google's Android and Apple's iOS, which grew to 51.6 percent and 32.4 percent respectively.

Android is also winning in the battle of the handset. Although Samsung and LG both dropped slightly in their share of the market, they remain the top two vendors, with 25.6 and 18.8 percent of mobile users respectively. Still, Apple's strong position is highlighted by the research as it managed to creep up by 1.4 percent to 15.4 percent, despite industry concerns that it would lose mobile users in the face of competition from popular Android devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S3 and Nexus, and the continuing wait for the iPhone 5.