This is big news for those in the world of mobile marketing. The GSM Association, which represents the mobile operators, has launched a new metrics service with Comscore, to provide detailed information about the mobile internet. The GSMA has taken great care to ensure that the data is anonymised and combined this with demographic data taken from a representative sample to ensure they are providing detailed information about what is happening on the mobile internet. The advantage of the mobile space is that mobile internet access is through just five operators, rather than the many ISPs for the fixed line internet. The only thing it cannot account for is access through WiFi connections.
Some initial data from the metrics showed that 16 million people in the UK accessed the mobile internet in December 2009. The top 10 sites accounted for 70% of the total traffic and were as follows:

1. Facebook.com (5 million)
2. Google sites (4.6m)
3. Telefonica Mobile Networks (3.7m)
4. Orange Sites (3.6m)
5. Vodafone Group (3.3m)
6. Yahoo! Sites (2m)
7. BBC Sites (1.9m)
8. Microsoft Sites (1.6m)
9. Apple (1.5m)
10. Nokia (1.1m)

It is no surprise that Facebook is top. It is interesting to see the number of mobile operator and manufacturer sites in this list. However, when listed according to time spent on the sites, Bebo and Flirtomatic both making it into the top 10, bumping out Telefonica (O2) and Nokia. It means that social networking is clearly a significant activity on mobile. Whilst the presence of Google, Yahoo and the BBC is unsurprising, it would seem that the operator portals still retain a place in the smartphone mobile web.