Nearly half of Internet users have mobile access

The percentage of Americans who use the Internet and who can also access it on the run using smart phones and other mobile devices is expected to grow from 39 percent in 2010 to 59 percent in 2014, according to a new Yahoo Inc. white paper.

This year, more than 126 million Americans -- or 47 percent of the total online population -- are expected to have mobile Internet access, Yahoo said, citing research from IDC Digital Marketplace.

Many real estate portals, brokerages and agents now offer mobile apps. Some of the most popular iPhone apps for real estate among consumers include offerings from Zillow, Realtor.com, Coldwell Banker, Trulia and ZipRealty, according to app-ranking site TopAppCharts.com.

A number of companies offer mobile apps designed for real estate agents or useful to them, including Top Producer, DocuSign and Open Home Pro.

Yahoo's white paper -- aimed at marketers looking to integrate mobile into their advertising campaigns -- notes that usage patterns among mobile users mirror the early days of the Internet, when e-mail dominated.

Among U.S. mobile Internet users, e-mail consumes 25 minutes of each hour spent online, followed by portals (7 minutes) social networking sites and blogs (6 minutes), search (4 minutes), and news (3 minutes).

Mobile Internet access tends to complement Web surfing on a personal computer, with six in 10 mobile Internet users saying they sometimes visit a site on their mobile device and then follow-up later from a PC, the paper said.

Some 86 percent of mobile Internet users said they surf the Web while watching TV -- Yahoo has documented an increase in mobile Internet usage during large prime-time TV events, such as the Academy Awards and the World Cup soccer finals.

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