Mobile devices are becoming the platform of choice for social networking sites in Asia potentially overtaking PCs, a new study said.

Research firm IDC, in the study released Wednesday, said in countries such as China, India, Korea, and Thailand, over 50 percent of the users interviewed have now made accessing social networking sites via the mobile phone on a weekly basis.

This is particularly widespread in the China and Thailand markets, where 62 percent and 65 percent of respective users regularly obtain news alerts and notifications, receive and reply to messages, upload photos, or update personal status and profiles on popular social networking sites via mobile phone browsers, IDC said.

By contrast, Australia and Singapore see the lowest percentage of users who access mobile versions of social networking sites, the research firm said, adding that only 19 percent and 25 percent of respective users login weekly via their mobile browsers.

“The prevalence of owning a cellular phone over a PC in China, India and Thailand has directly boosted the popularity of mobile social networking site access,” said Debbie Swee, market analyst at IDC Asia Pacific emerging technologies research.

The analyst said however that Korea maybe an exception.

“In Korea, however, there is strong usage for a different reason, the market is technologically advanced and has already seen mass adoption of mobile Internet as compared with all other countries surveyed in the study,” she said, adding that "as for Australia and Singapore, despite also being technologically advanced markets, the overwhelming importance of the PC over mobile has created strong inertia against adopting regular mobile access of social networking sites.”

The IDC study also indicated that mobile operators’ pricing strategies are possibly keeping many non-users away from mobile social networking.

Majority of users who have never logged in to social networking sites through mobile phones before have cited the hefty data tariffs as the main obstacle. These service fees can be in the form of mobile Internet, SMS or MMS access. IDC said users of social networking sites will be more likely to try out mobile versions of these sites if the telcos offer more affordable data rates.

The availability of user-friendly mobile applications is also perceived as a notable area of improvement, albeit to a lesser extent, IDC said.

“The survey findings thus show that mobile phones and mobile Internet hold the promise of changing the social networking site landscape in the Asia/Pacific region. Particularly in markets where PC penetration is relatively low, mobile phones have the potential to eventually overtake the PC as a preferred way of accessing these sites,” Swee further said.