Market research outfit Synovate has come out with a study of 8000 mobile/cell phone users in eleven countries and found that the handsets are increasingly becoming our remote controls for life.

Aside from SMS, Synovate found that the three most used phone features were:

• Alarm clock, 67% globally…meaning that for 2/3 of us, our phones are ever present, even when we’re sleeping
• Camera, 62%
• Games, 33% – a figure that’s clearly going to increase over the next year or two

In the US, UK over a quarter email and surf the Web on their phones

Though only 17% of global phone owners regularly emailed via their phones, in the US the figure was 26% and 25% in the UK. Similarly, both the UK (31%) and US (26%) had higher mobile Internet browsing rates than the average of 17%.

The study also includes so-called ‘flirt n dirt’ stats, namely that 12% of mobile users have broken up with someone via text, while 31% have used text to lie about their whereabouts.

According to Synovate head of global media Steve Garton, “one very important point about the marketing potential of the phone is that people tend to classify the mobile phone differently to mainstream media…most people do not think of phones as a media platform at all.”

And that note, the Chitika Network did a study in the US that showed that mobile click through rates were a derisory 0.48%, compared to an already poor 0.83% for banner ads. For iPhone users, click through rates were even worse – 0.3%. This does point to the fact that mobile usage is a huge opportunity for marketers, but that resistance to being sold stuff is high.

The other month, another study found that mobile video usage is generally the ‘tipping point’ when people use their phones for Internet browsing more than they do their computers.

Via Marketing Charts