London, July 11 : The number of people using their mobile phones to surf net has significant increased this year.

According to a report released recently, mobile web has reached a "critical mass" of users this year.

The US tops the list, with nearly 40 million American using their handset to browse Internet.

The UK and Italy occupy second and third spots, respectively, out of countries surveyed by the analyst firm Nielsen Mobile

Indonesia has the lowest take-up with just 1.1 per cent of mobile subscribers using their handsets for surfing the web.

"Mobile internet reached a critical mass this year, offering a large and diverse enough base of users to support large-scale mobile marketing efforts," the BBC quoted the authors as writing.

The number of people using the mobile web has increased from 22.4 million in 2006 to more than 40 million today in America.

"The adoption and the experience are improving at an impressive rate," Nic Covey, Nielsen Mobile''s director of insights, said.

Yahoo and Google were the most popular sites to be browed on web.

The report also talks about differences between browsing habits in PC and the small screen.

"PC internet users visit more than 100 domains per month, on average. By contrast, the average mobile internet user in the US visited 6.4 individual websites per month," the report said.

However, when it comes iPhone, the firm found that 82 per cent of the owners access the mobile Internet, "making them five times as likely to do so as the average mobile consumer".

The authors said that growth like this means that the mobile web is now a viable option for big business. (ANI)