Mobile Internet grew in popularity during 2012 – Sanoma online services indicate that Finns are embracing the age of mobile Internet

1/23/2013 5:20 AM EST

Mobile Internet grew in popularity during 2012 – Sanoma online services
indicate that Finns are embracing the age of mobile Internet

Sanoma Corporation, Press Release, 23 January 2013 at 12:20 CET+1

In 2012, Finns increasingly started accessing online services through mobile
equipment. At the same time, the Nokia Lumia became more popular than Android,
and reached the popularity of the iPhone. 

These are some of the findings of the analysis of user data collected from
Sanoma's online services in the Finnish language. According to TNS Atlas,
Sanoma's services reach 85 per cent of Finland’s online users. Therefore, it is
possible to make quite precise conclusions from the behaviour and device base
of Finns on the basis of the user data of the services. 

The share of mobile equipment in the use of all online services in 2012
increased very rapidly. A total of 15% of website visits was via mobile
equipment. At the same time, mobile users spent more time on the websites and
they accessed a higher number of pages, so at the end of 2012, as many as 35%
of page loading was from mobile equipment, whereas the corresponding figure at
the start of 2012 was 10%. 

Sanoma mobile services are accessed to a particularly frequent extent on
business days from 6 a.m. - 7 a.m. and from 9 p.m. to midnight when Finns read
news and weather services. 

News sites in particular were popular among mobile users, and the mobile
versions of news services broke their visitor records. The Ilta-Sanomat mobile
service, accessed by one smartphone user in three every week, was the most
popular mobile website in Finland. In the record-breaking week (week 37), the
service was accessed by 686,000 unique visitors. The highest number of visitors
to the Helsingin Sanomat mobile service was 597,000 (week 47). 

”Ilta-Sanomat is heavily investing in the development of the mobile website and
apps because our visitors want to read news on their mobile devices. In 2012,
the weekly number of pages viewed on mobile devices increased from less than
five million to more than 21 million," says Timo Rinne, Commercial Director of
Ilta-Sanomat online. 

”Advertisers also really discovered mobile and tablet advertising in 2012 and
we are confident that mobile advertising will grow rapidly this year. The
diverse opportunities of the HS iPad app particularly appealed to advertisers.
The HS iPad app has already been downloaded to nearly 100,000 devices," says
Petteri Putkiranta, Business Director of Helsingin Sanomat. 

At the end of 2012, Sanoma had more than 90 mobile apps or sites customised for
mobile devices. Sanoma also introduced several innovative and interesting types
of advertising for mobile devices. 

Nokia is a favourite among Finns

The visitor statistics of Sanoma online services also indicate changes in the
popularity of mobile devices. It seems that Finns really embraced Nokia Lumia
last year. 

”Sanoma's network and number of mobile visitors indicates that the total
traffic from Lumia phones exceeded that from Android phones in the summer and
it also reached the traffic level of the iPhone at year-end," says Anders
Stenbäck, Director of Sanoma's digital partnerships. 

In the autumn, Sanoma and Nokia launched co-operation through which new Lumia
phones have Helsingin Sanomat and Ilta-Sanomat apps pre-installed. 

"The co-operation with Nokia has been productive and it has also clearly
increased the number of users of our Windows apps. Finland still remains
Nokialand,” says Stenbäck. 

Sources: Weekly visitor volumes TNS Metrix; Visits and pages loaded:
Sanoma-internal measuring; Other: TNS Gallup: ”Finnish smartphone users in
2012”. 

Additional information
Timo Rinne, Commercial Director, Online, Ilta-Sanomat, email
 , tel. +358 40 571 3634 
Petteri Putkiranta, Business Director, Helsingin Sanomat,
 , tel. +358 40 550 1551 
Anders Stenbäck, Digital Partnership Director, Sanoma, email
 , tel. +358 50 548 2234 

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