A Nation of Online Shoppers

Britain has been identified as a nation more involved in web-based shopping than any other country.
The number of people using their mobiles to surf the web was also higher in the UK than in any other country surveyed. Nearly half (46 per cent) of UK internet users were using their phones to go online in October 2011. Social networking sites, accessed via mobile or PC, were used by three-quarters of consumers, rising to 83 per cent of 18-24 year-olds.

More than a third of Britons also used their mobile to play games, and a quarter used them to look at news websites. Only using the internet to make telephone calls was more popular abroad, where services such as Skype are used by 28 per cent in Italy, compared to just 19 per cent in the UK.