Mobile Web use in the United Kingdom surged by 25 percent in the third quarter of 2008, Nielsen Online research has found, PC Pro reported Monday. Since the second quarter of his year, the number of users jumped from 5.8 million to 7.3 million.

Younger users may be more likely to surf the Web from mobile platforms, as a quarter of mobile Web users are aged between 15 and 24, compared to 16 percent for PC-based browsing.

According to the study, three of the BBC's sites are on the top 10 list of most visited mobile sites in the United Kingdom. Overall, the BBC News is the most popular mobile site, as 24 percent of users access it. BBC Weather and BBC Sport rank third and sixth on the top 10 list, respectively, PC Pro reported.

Nielsen Senior Analyst Kent Ferguson stated that outlets like BBC Weather, Sky Sports and Google's e-mail service Gmail may have a larger reach across the mobile Internet.

"This highlights the advantage of mobile when it comes to immediacy; people often need fast, instant access to weather or sports news and mobile can obviously satisfy this, wherever they are," Ferguson said, according to PC Pro.

PC Pro suggested that one factor to explain the trend is the popularity of mobile rates outlining "unlimited" use. The availability of recently launched devices that have full Web browsing features may also contribute to mobile Web's growth.