Research firm Nielsen Mobile wants to know why people use mobile search. In its latest study conducted, about 46.1 million mobile data users are engaged on different mobile search functions during the 3rd quarter of 2007.

Based on the survey with more than 5,000 mobile search users, the research firm made the following estimates:

1. The most popular form of mobile search among data users in Q3 2007 was 411 (18.1 million users), followed closely by SMS (text-message) -based searching, which was used by 14.1 million data users during the same period.

2. While local listings were the leading search objective in terms of users, (27.1 million data users searched for local listings in Q3 2007), 14.8 million said they searched for information such as sports scores, news or weather, while nearly a quarter (11.3 million) said they searched for mobile content.

Moreover, there seems to be some gender differences when it comes to this function. The male users are quite fond of mobile Internet or WAP, accounting for 61%. Conversely, females are into 411 searches.

Via Press Release