Data released by mobile operator body the GSMA has revealed Facebook dwarfs all other mobile internet traffic, accounting for almost half of total page views from the 16m people going online via their mobile in December.

Initial Mobile Media Metrics (MMM) data from three operators shows 16m unique users viewed 6.7bn pages, spending 4.8bn minutes online during December.

This number will grow following the addition of data from T-Mobile and 3 within weeks.

The top ten sites browsed accounted for 70% of total page views and time spent online via mobile. Facebook was the most popular site with almost 5m unique users, ahead of Google with 4.57m visitors. O2, Orange and Vodafone portals followed, ahead of Yahoo, the BBC and Microsoft.

Mobile domains owned by Apple and Nokia made up the remainder of the top ten sites.

Facebook also claimed the lion’s share of total page views, with 2.64bn in December, beating Google into second place with 894.3m page views. Bebo, Ebay and Flirtomatic also appeared in the top ten sites with the highest page views.

Facebook saw the most amount of time spent on its mobile site in December, accounting for 2.16bn minutes during the month, with Google again second, claiming 395.6m minutes.