Students Put the Internet in their Pockets

Back to School I

This fall approximately 30 million students will head off to colleges and universities across the United States to begin a new school year. But are they as prepared for the year’s study as they could be?

A vast majority of these students will bring mobile phones with them. It’s no secret that mobile phones are an essential part of everyone’s daily lives. But college students are only now discovering the benefits of using phones to surf the Web. A recent survey found just over half of college students with mobile phones use the mobile Internet, but mainly for social networking and entertainment, not scholastic pursuits.

The generation of students now enrolled in college is described as the most connected generation ever. Virtually every student goes online at least once a month. However when Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Bitstream, the company that produces the BOLT mobile Web browser, surveyed college students about their use of mobile phones, it found 45 percent of them aren’t yet using the mobile Internet, even though their phones are likely capable of Internet access.

Christine Arrington, senior analyst with Acacia Research Group, studies trends in the mobile media market and says there are three key contributing factors for why college students may not use the mobile Internet for productivity purposes: cost, awareness, and utility. “Cost is always an issue with college students, and adding a data plan to their wireless service is likely contributing to keeping adoption low,” says Arrington. “But the main factor is probably awareness. Students who do not manage their own service may not be aware that they have Internet availability on their phones, even if someone else, like a parent, is already paying for the service. “

Arrington notes that cost of data in wireless service plans is dropping and many plans now include an unlimited data option. If cost is not a factor, utility often presents a big stumbling block for students to move from social networking to course work.

For more than a decade the wireless industry has called on website developers to create mobile companion sites that cell phones can access. Still many websites, including half of the top 20 most popular, don’t work well on mobile phones.

David Mayman, a senior at California’s University of the Pacific, uses his phone daily to browse the Web for entertainment and social networking, observed this utility issue, saying “websites should do a better job of making their mobile versions just as functional as the main sites and easy to use on the phone.”

Addressing the mobile Internet’s utility is where companies like Bitstream come in. “A great many advances in mobile technology have tremendously improved how the Internet can be used on mobile phones,” says Bitstream CEO Anna Chagnon. “Phones have bigger screens, faster network access, better keypads and now the ability view websites the way their designers intended.”

Chagnon contends there is only one Internet, not two separate versions with one for computers and another for cell phones. The BOLT mobile browser that Bitstream produces displays websites the same way they are seen on a computer, yet with navigation and magnification tools that make visiting them easier on the mobile phone’s smaller form factor.

Mobile Web browsers that faithfully display a website the way desktop computers do, like the iPhone’s Safari browser, are shown to increase Internet use on phones. BOLT, which anyone can get for free at boltbrowser.com, properly displays websites on all types of mobile phones.

Does accessing the Web from a phone improve the learning experience? Many of the college students surveyed believe it does.

“It is convenient to look things up on Wikipedia when I need to get an answer fast,” says Amanda Walden, a senior at Baylor University in Texas.

Virtually every mobile phone now in use is capable of using the Internet and data plans prices continue to drop, making the mobile Internet practical for students. As more resources and learning tools find their way to the World Wide Web, will college students access them from the one device they keep in their pockets and take anywhere they go? Time will tell.

Contacts

Mobility Public Relations
John Sidline, 503-946-3311
jsidline {at} mobilitypr(.)com