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The USA has knocked the UK off the top slot for mobile web browsing with 29% of the worldwide traffic, according to data released today by Bango. And the good news for content providers is that the growth in traffic is being matched by the growth in users paying for content on the mobile web.

Bango has made operator billing much more efficient by enabling people to simply single-click to buy and download content straight to their mobile handsets. This optimized user experience has increased conversion rates to such an extent that mobile advertising and search marketing is now a profitable way of generating leads for Bango’s customers.

The publicity behind the Apple iPhone has encouraged more people to browse the mobile web in countries such as the US and UK. But this increase in mobile browsing has taken businesses by surprise as many don’t have mobile websites.

The February Bango statistics identified mobile web browsers from a total of 208 different countries and using 1,811 different handsets. View a sample of the mobile traffic going through the Bango system at http://bango.com/live/

The statistics also show that while some countries such as India and Indonesia have a good appetite for browsing on their mobiles, it doesn’t always convert into purchases. In fact, only five countries in the Top 10 browsing chart are also in the Top 10 payments chart – USA, UK, Portugal, South Africa and Spain.

No matter how high the browsing rate, it is only converted into a high purchase rate where people have a good disposable income and can pay for content on their phone bills. In regions such as India, South Africa, Indonesia and Egypt the driver for mobile browsing is a lack of fixed-line broadband and PCs for accessing the internet which means that the mobile device is the only way people can get onto the internet.