Britons lead Europe for news on the move Some 46 per cent of British smartphone owners access mobile news websites and apps at least once a month, ComScore said, compared to the European average (which includes Britain) of 37 per cent. The next most enthusiastic consumers of mobile news are in France, where 37 per cent of smartphone users access services at least once a month. Consumption is growing strongly across the entire continent, however. In Spain, 32 per cent of smartphone owners now access mobile news every month, with the audience having grown by 127 per cent in the last year. British mobile news services enjoyed annual growth of 63 per cent. The trend in part reflects the rapid growth of the smartphone market. More than half of Britons now use an internet-enabled mobile, according to Ofcom. "Today's mobile consumer wants to be plugged into what's happening around them every second of the day, and their smartphones are enabling them to do that," said Hesham Al-Jehani of ComScore. This rapidly changing trend brings with it significant incremental opportunity for news publishers to extend their audiences, but also the challenges of delivering their content effectively through the small screen. Many news organisations see mobile app subscriptions as the promising way to get readers to pay for online news.