The FT's inaugural 'Mobile in the Boardroom' report looks at the use of mobile devices based on a survey of more than 1000 business professionals alongside aggregated data traffic from FT.com servers and industry consumer data.
Data from the Newspaper Marketing Agency reportedly found that unique users made on average 2.3 visits to a UK national newspaper site in November 2010, while in comparison the FT.com's own data suggests that iPhone users visited the site's content just under six times that month.
The report also claims that the level of engagement or 'dwell time' among mobile users is "starting to approach those generated by users who visit national newspaper web sites on the desktop web".
According to the report, 43 per cent of iPhone app users spend one to ten minutes on FT.com compared to 53.4 per cent of visitors to UK national newspaper sites.
Other findings from the survey include more than 40 per cent of business professionals saying they use their handsets to access news and current affairs content. Among those who regularly access the web on their handsets, this rises to 76 per cent.
Business professionals were also found to be more than twice as likely to access general news compared to the average consumer and significantly more willing to pay for online content, with 32 per cent suggesting that they would 'probably' or 'maybe' pay for access to financial or business news over traditional internet connections and 36 per cent for general news content delivered to their mobile handsets.
"News is already popular among consumers who use their handsets to access the mobile web," the report says.
"Yet usage patterns among business users suggest that news will become significantly more popular as high-end smartphones, news apps and user-friendly browsers proliferate.
"Consumers will become more enthusiastic users. As they do so, the mobile web will emerge as a major new channel for the distribution of news. Among business users, this shift is already occurring."
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