The Kaspersky Lab research - which took in responses from 1600 smartphones users in the UK, France, Italy and Spain - revealed there has been a recent increase in the number of attacks on mobile operating systems like Google Android and Apple iOS, and experts expect to see considerably more of these in the future.
Despite this, Kaspersky found that users in Europe feel more secure accessing the internet via a mobile device.
51% of those surveyed said they were afraid of having their computer infected with malware whilst surfing the internet, compared with the fact that 27% of respondents consider a virus infection on their computer a serious threat.
One interesting detail which emerged from the survey is that users consider the risk of losing personal data lower on a smartphone than on a PC.
According to Kaspersky, this is despite the fact that around a fifth of all smartphone users have already experienced the loss or theft of a mobile device.
The majority of users - over 90% in most European countries - store personal data, such as photos, emails or contact details, on their smartphones.
Researchers also found that around a third of smartphone users also save login information, such as PIN codes or passwords, for various services on their mobile devices.
This finding, says Kaspersky, demonstrated there is a large gap between secure reality and user perception.