Mobile Internet - Human-Computer Interaction and Innovation in Handheld, Mobile and Wearable Technologies - page 282

their phone plans in such way that the use of the
operator mobile portal was part of the phone plan;
users paid the same fee whether or not they used
the portal but additional costs were incurred to
access other Web sites. As a result, only users that
had WLAN support on their phones browsed full
Web sites—typically when at a WLAN hotspot.
The respondents of the online survey were
asked to list up to 5 recent Web sites they had
accessed via their mobile browser. Collectively,
respondents identified 999 Web addresses: half of
these sites were available only as full Web versions;
25% of the addresses led to sites that were clearly
mobile-tailored, and the rest to sites available both
in full Web and mobile-tailored formats, such as
Google and Yahoo! More users reported browsing
mobile-tailored than full Web sites, but there was
more diversity with regards full Web sites; many
users browsing mobile-tailored sites reported
accessing the same operator portals. Users who
reported accessing only mobile-tailored sites listed
just 1 or 2 Web addresses, whereas respondents
who also browsed the full Web on mobile devices
reported having viewed at least 4 sites.
When the Web sites viewed, and correspond-
ing motivations of the users in the survey, were
divided using the categorization by Cui and Roto
(2008)—i.e., information seeking , communica-
tion , and content object handling —we observed
that 60% of the respondents mentioned access-
ing sites that supported clear information search
motivations—e.g., the use of search engines,
news sites, and news areas of operator portals.
Communication (mostly Web-based email) was
mentioned by 20% of the respondents, and object
handling, like adding text or photos to a blog, was
mentioned by 30% of the respondents.

activities were the same no matter how they ac-
cessed a site, there were also differences. When
seeking information, users generally read news
and searched information based on keywords
in search engines; on mobile devices they read
smaller amounts of text and browsed for a shorter
period of time. Users also read email on both mo-
bile and desktop computers; on mobile devices,
however, users read more emails than they wrote.
Users also avoided reading very long emails on
mobile phones if they were not essential; if they
needed to write an email on a mobile phone, their
responses were typically shorter than on a desktop
computer. That said, although the responses were
short on mobile devices, they were no less im-
portant than the longer ones written on a desktop
computer. Many respondents reported that they
followed blogs and discussion group conversa-
tions on mobile devices. Writing to, and active
participation in, social sites was less common on
mobile devices than on desktop computers. One
could assume that this is mainly due to the small
screen and numeric keyboard but although these
do influence behavior, our interviews revealed
more reasons: mobile Web sessions were shorter
and more prone to interruptions than sessions on
a desktop computer, so the latter was considered
more appropriate for participating actively in
social sites where one needs more time and peace.
Based on the interviews, we observed that
there were some activities where mobile phones
were linked to the Web via a desktop computer;
some users perceived this to represent Internet
use on a mobile device. Mobile imaging is one
such case: picture viewing usually happened on
the mobile phone from the phone's photo gallery;
people shared photos by sending them as MMS
messages or by transferring the photos to a desktop
computer and either uploading them to a photo
service or sending them as an email attachment:

Computer vs. Mobile Device

Most respondents to our survey accessed the In-
ternet with both a desktop computer and a mobile
phone. Some of the Web sites they browsed are
the same on both platforms. Although some user

Mobile photos I sync them to my computer, I MMS
them to people, on occasion, maybe two or three
times in a month, maybe not that often. Because