The study launched in November last year to 2,000 mobile internet users in China, Indonesia, the US and Vietnam. The Asia-Pacific markets were chosen for their varied positions along the internet development cycle, while the US provided the benchmark of a “mature internet market”.

Key findings from the pilot study included:

• The mobile-only audience is larger in scale in fast-developing markets – Indonesia leads with 28% mobile-only users, followed by Vietnam with 23%
• The vast majority of users in all markets are still connected via multiple devices
• Mobile-only users more likely to be urban in the US and rural in emerging markets
• Online behaviour shown by mobile-only internet users to be typically less engaged than for cross-platform internet users

Tom Smith, CEO & founder at GWI said: “The trend of mobile-only audiences is well-speculated but hasn’t been researched in-depth. After testing the audience, we have decided to integrate the data into our core study. It represents a key issue for advertisers, brands and web companies as a large section of the internet universe is currently unidentified.

“The blind spot that results from this is likely to misrepresent the accepted view of growing internet markets.”