Mediametrie reports that Google was the most popular site in the third quarter, with more than nine million visits. The organization, which monitors 10,000 French mobile Internet users, conducted its first quarterly poll and found that Google was in the lead but other sites were not far behind. FT Orange came in second with over 8.6 million visits and Facebook with 8.15 million people using handsets to access the social networking site.
France's two other main operators, SFR and Bouygues Telecom, are the next most popular with 7.32 million and 4.7 million respectively. Apple was rated as #5 with 4.21 million visits.
Mediametrie said that the poll, which measured mobile internet traffic over the three main cellcos' GPRS and 3G networks, monitored the visits at over 5,200 mobile-enabled websites. However, this excluded any connections made by iPod Touch, iPads and other internet tablets, BlackBerry devices, https and Opera browsing, and MVNO customers.
While the company didn't explain why it had not recorded visits made by these devices and alternative routes, it announced that it would measure connections to mobile internet sites made via Wi-Fi connections next year.
Many of the leading French newspapers, magazine and information sites registered similar numbers of around 1.5 million and 2 million visits per month. This included Le Figaro, SNCF, Vivendi Universal, Dailymotion, AlloCine, Le Monde and Meteo France.
Data from TSM/Mobile Consumer Insight said that France had nearly 46 million mobile phone users in the third quarter, 13.7 million of which said they had used their handset to go online in the last month.
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