Forecast: local businesses to spend one-quarter of their ad budgets on digital media this year. New research from BIA/Kelsey offers more evidence of the shift in local ad dollars to digital media. Small and medium businesses surveyed by the financial services firm said they plan to allocate an average 26% of their budgets to digital/online media over the next 12 months. Self-serve advertising and promotional tools, including video, social media and search engine marketing, topped the list of the most preferred online channels. How committed a business is to digital media directly corresponds to the age of the business. “Younger businesses spend much more of their ad budgets on digital/online media than their older counterparts that spend more on traditional media,” director of research Steve Marshall says. Nearly half of survey respondents (49%) reported they purchase online advertising themselves, directly from a website, either with or without live operator assistance. More than half (52%) said they use social media to promote their businesses, and 22% said they plan to have a video on YouTube in the next 12 months. “Our analysis is that we are on the verge of a real revolution in marketing platforms that serve small and medium businesses, in particular around digital presence,” says Matt Booth, SVP and program director of the firm’s interactive local media division.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Facebook Premium Ads Guide
Facebook's New, Entirely Social Ads Will Recreate Marketing
BY E.B. BoydToday
Leaked documents show Facebook making a radical departure from traditional online display advertising into a world where ads are conversations and brands automatically tell you which of your friends are already on their side.
Facebook appears ready to launch a new set of premium ad units, and, based on a review of documents which purport to describe them, the social network would seem to be doubling down on two core principles that mark fundamental departures from traditional advertising.
First, Facebook is making the new ads social by default, meaning they will automatically show users when their friends have already Liked the advertiser. And the new formats will draw their content exclusively from posts to brands' Facebook Pages, rather from advertising copy written independently.
Combined, these features make two statements about where Facebook believes the future of online advertising lies--at least in its particular universe. It is saying that ads based on content, rather than messaging, have a better chance of hitting home, and that ads involving tacit endorsements from the people you know have a better chance of capturing your attention.
"When people hear about you from friends, they listen," the Facebook materials say. "We'll expand your ad with stories from friends who have already connected." ("Stories" is Facebook's shorthand for a wide varitey of interactions on the site. In the case of ads, it seems to refer to the fact that the ads will display which of a viewer's friends have Liked the brand.)
Facebook has not commented publicly on the new ads (presumably they will discuss them at a marketing launch event in New York next week). But the materials describing the new units were posted to Scribd earlier this week. The news was first reported on GigaOm. The documents are below.
Facebook Premium Ads Guide
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
Politicians Should Be Advertising with Newspapers & on Their Websites
Newspaper Readers Vote, and Voters Read Newspapers
Arlington, Va. – A new survey of U.S. voters’ media use demonstrates the advantages newspaper media hold in connecting political advertisers – election campaigns and issues advocates – with registered American voters, the group most likely to vote. The American Voters Media Use Study, conducted by Moore Information, shows that 86 percent of registered voters read newspapers in print or online. Ninety-one percent of voters who contributed money to a campaign read online or print newspapers.
“Cutting across party affiliations and age groups, it’s clear that newspapers and their digital platforms provide a superior medium for advertising that supports election campaigns and drives awareness of the issues,” said Caroline Little, NAA president and CEO. “Whether measuring perceptions of trust and reliability or use of the medium’s digital and mobile platforms, newspapers have a clear advantage in reaching and motivating those highly likely to vote. Campaigns and advocates seeking effective advertising to reach their target audiences need look no further than the local newspaper.”
Key findings of the Moore Information study include:
• Eighty-six percent of voters who cast ballots in the last local election read newspapers in print or online,
with levels of engagement holding consistent among voters identifying as Republican, Democratic or
Independent.
• Engagement remains high even among young voters – 79 percent of voters ages 18 to 34 read newspapers
in print or online.
• Newspapers and their websites consistently outscore other media for being “reliable,” “accurate” and “indepth”
about local civic and political issues. Newspaper political advertising is the least “annoying” of any
medium. Fifty-four percent of voters rate local TV political ads as “annoying” – only 18 percent of voters
say the same for local newspaper political ads.
• Among voters who plan to use mobile devices for campaign and election news, 58 percent plan to turn to
newspaper sources. That number rises to 62 percent among the 18-to-34 demographic.
• Ninety-one percent of voters who contribute to campaigns read newspapers in print or online.
Moore Information, which specializes in opinion research for political campaigns, ballot measures, corporations, nonprofits and government agencies, conducted the American Voters Media Use Survey for the Newspaper Association of America among an online panel screened in from a nationally representative sample of 2,000
registered voters. Fieldwork was conducted early in 2012 after the New Hampshire primary and prior to the South Carolina primary. A summary presentation on the American Voters Media Use Survey is available at www.naa.org/political. - NAA
Arlington, Va. – A new survey of U.S. voters’ media use demonstrates the advantages newspaper media hold in connecting political advertisers – election campaigns and issues advocates – with registered American voters, the group most likely to vote. The American Voters Media Use Study, conducted by Moore Information, shows that 86 percent of registered voters read newspapers in print or online. Ninety-one percent of voters who contributed money to a campaign read online or print newspapers.
“Cutting across party affiliations and age groups, it’s clear that newspapers and their digital platforms provide a superior medium for advertising that supports election campaigns and drives awareness of the issues,” said Caroline Little, NAA president and CEO. “Whether measuring perceptions of trust and reliability or use of the medium’s digital and mobile platforms, newspapers have a clear advantage in reaching and motivating those highly likely to vote. Campaigns and advocates seeking effective advertising to reach their target audiences need look no further than the local newspaper.”
Key findings of the Moore Information study include:
• Eighty-six percent of voters who cast ballots in the last local election read newspapers in print or online,
with levels of engagement holding consistent among voters identifying as Republican, Democratic or
Independent.
• Engagement remains high even among young voters – 79 percent of voters ages 18 to 34 read newspapers
in print or online.
• Newspapers and their websites consistently outscore other media for being “reliable,” “accurate” and “indepth”
about local civic and political issues. Newspaper political advertising is the least “annoying” of any
medium. Fifty-four percent of voters rate local TV political ads as “annoying” – only 18 percent of voters
say the same for local newspaper political ads.
• Among voters who plan to use mobile devices for campaign and election news, 58 percent plan to turn to
newspaper sources. That number rises to 62 percent among the 18-to-34 demographic.
• Ninety-one percent of voters who contribute to campaigns read newspapers in print or online.
Moore Information, which specializes in opinion research for political campaigns, ballot measures, corporations, nonprofits and government agencies, conducted the American Voters Media Use Survey for the Newspaper Association of America among an online panel screened in from a nationally representative sample of 2,000
registered voters. Fieldwork was conducted early in 2012 after the New Hampshire primary and prior to the South Carolina primary. A summary presentation on the American Voters Media Use Survey is available at www.naa.org/political. - NAA
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Google Study - Newspaper Ads Help Drive Consumers to the Web
The survey of 1,003 search-engine-using adults who also read newspapers (an estimated 82 million people in the US) finds that among those who go online to research a product, nearly half (47%) go directly to a product URL, 31% go to a search engine, and 22% go to another site:
Some additional findings from the study, below.
Effect on Purchasing
Some 42% of respondents reported that in the last month they purchased at least one product they had seen in the newspaper.
Most of them (83%) purchased at least one thing from a store or dealer; the second most common purchase venue was online (38%):
Among those who go online after seeing ads in newspapers, nearly 70% make purchases following their additional research.
Multi-channel Ads Increase Trust/Likelihood to Buy
Seeing products and services advertised in multiple channels increased both consumer trust in them and likelihood to buy.
Nearly half of respondents (48%) said seeing a product in the newspaper after seeing it online would make them trust the product more. More than half that group (52%) said they would be more likely to purchase the product if they saw a newspaper ad for a product they already knew about from the internet.
When rating which media are better for different functions, respondents considered the newspaper more useful for learning about promotions (68% - vs. 42% for the internet) and deciding where (54% v. 45%) and when (43% v. 30%) to buy:
About the survey: In mid-2007, Google commissioned Clark, Martire & Bartolomeo to conduct a study of American print newspaper readers with the goal of gathering data that explored how newspaper readers respond to newspaper ads by going online. The survey was based on a random digit dialing telephone sample of 1,003 target adults. Target adults were regular print newspaper readers who use the Internet, and search engines, at least once a month.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Global Mobile Statistics 2012
Global mobile statistics 2012: all quality mobile marketing research, mobile Web stats, subscribers, ad revenue, usage, trends…
February 2012: The essential compendium of need-to-know statistics. Beware of media hype and mobile myth – put your mobile strategy on a sound footing with the latest research from credible independent experts. Global mobile subscribers, handset sales, smartphone market share, mobile Web usage, mobile apps, mobile ad spend, top mobile operators and mobile financial services.
LATEST UPDATE (February, 2012):
Adds… • Mobile devices shipments 2011: Nokia remains number one. • Smartphone shipments: Samsung is top dog. • Smartphone operating systems Android is nearly half smartphones shipped. • Global Web hits from mobile devices. • Cellular subscriptions worldwide: 6 billion. • Latest subscriber stats for top three countries: China and India now account for over 30 percent of world subs, both rapidly approaching 1 billion and dwarfing subs in third-place USA. • Global and regional Mobile Web usage stats: 1.2 billion active mobile-broadband subscriptions worldwide; Asia is top region; Top 10 mobile Web countries: South Korea and Japan lead in mobile broadband penetration. • VC investment in mobile in 2011: $6.3 billion or 42.4 percent of total budgets. • Top US mobile ad networks by revenue are Google, Millennial Media, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Jumptap. • Google’s $2.5 billion in annual revenue from mobile advertising. • eBay expects customers to buy and sell $8 billion of merchandise in 2012. • PayPal expects to see $7 billion in mobile payment volume in 2012.
The mobiThinking compendium of mobile statistics and research
The stats, all the stats and nothing but the stats…In the past two years, we have gone from a smattering of mobile statistics to an abundance of useful information. But there's still a long way to go, there are still huge gaps in our knowledge, some countries enjoy a proliferation of data sources, while others have little or none; and the quality of statistics varies incredibly. As telecoms regulators and industry associations start to collect and share meaningful data, things will only get better.
An unfortunate side effect of the media’s recent surge of enthusiasm for mobile in the past year is a tendency to highlight data of dubious quality (often when better is available), and/or widespread misunderstanding, misreporting and failure to qualify figures they have cherry-picked. This isn't just misleading and confusing, it's damaging. If brands are persuaded by hype to divert funds into niche, ill-thought-through mobile projects and then get burnt, the whole mobile business suffers.
This mobile stats compendium – which is regularly updated - hopefully goes some way to putting right some of the sins of the last few years. But please remember that even the best quality independent statistics are speculative to some degree – stats are not facts.
• If you use any of the stats, please remember to source and link to both the analysts and to mobiThinking. Please do not republish more than 5 percent of the content without seeking permission.
• Thanks to all the analysts, associations and regulators that continue to send us their research. Please keep us updated: editor(at)mobiThinking.com.
• Be the first to know when we add new stats: @mobithinking
The Compendium of global mobile stats received 470,000 Pageviews in 2011, check out mobiThinking’s other top content: Most popular content on mobiThinking in 2011
Brush up on your mobile marketing/Web skills at one of mobiThinking’s partner events. We have great discounts and free tickets to give away. Coming up in March: The Mobile Marketing Conference (Miami, USA) • The BLN Making it Mobile Forum (London, UK) • 4G Device World Summit (Seoul, South Korea) Coming up in April: Mobile Payments & NFC Asia 2011 (Hong Kong) • MMA Forum Asia (Singapore).
“We had more than 425 million mobile monthly active users in December 2011. In 2011, mobile usage of Facebook increased in markets around the world, including major developed markets such as the United States where smartphone penetration grew rapidly… Improving our mobile products and increasing mobile usage of Facebook are key company priorities that we believe are critical to help us maintain and grow our user base and engagement over the long term. We expect consumers around the world will continue to increase the amount of time they spend and the information they share and consume through mobile devices.” – Facebook IPO statement (February, 2012).
Those statistics in a nutshell:
N.B. This bit is just a taster, an introduction/index, scroll down or follow the links to be taken to in-depth coverage of all the stats, with tables and links to all the sources, below.PART A: Mobile subscribers; handset data; mobile operators
1) There are 5.9 billion mobile subscribers (that's 87 percent of the world population). Growth is led by China and India, which now account for over 30 percent of world subs,
• What other medium offers that reach?
2) Mobile devices sales rose in 2011, with smartphones showing strongest growth, Nokia remains the number one handset manufacturer, but Samsung is now the leading smartphone hardware vendorAndroid is now the top smartphone operating system.
• Feature phones sales (let alone ownership) still outnumber smartphones 2:1. If your mobile strategy doesn’t include feature phones, it doesn’t include most of your customers.
3) Top mobile network operator for subscribers and revenues is China Mobile; for average revenue per user is 3UK; for lowest monthly churn is NTT DOCOMO Japan; and for proportion of revenues from data is Smart Philippines.
• But it’s not all good news. Mobile operators in developed countries could run out of profit in the next two to four years if they do not change their business models.
• All these stats in detail below…
PART B: Mobile Web; users; 3G coverage
1) There are now 1.2 billion mobile Web users worldwide, based on the latest stats for active mobile-broadband subscriptions worldwide; Asia is top region.
2) South Korea and Japan lead in mobile broadband penetration with 91 and 88 percent respectively.
3) Mobile devices account for 8.49 percent of global Website hits.
4) Many mobile Web users are mobile-only, i.e. they do not, or very rarely use a desktop, laptop or tablet to access the Web. Even in the US 25 percent of mobile Web users are mobile-only.
• Still think you don’t need a mobile site?
5) The drivers of mobile Web and mobile media are:
(i) Web-enabled handsets - by 2011, over 85 percent of new handsets will be able to access the mobile Web. In US and W. Europe, it is already surpassed that. Lots of new handsets support 3G (fast Internet).
• N.B. smartphones are only a fraction of Web-enabled phones.
(ii) High-speed mobile networks - almost one in five global mobile subscribers have access to fast mobile Internet (3G or better).
(iii) Unlimited data plans - Widespread availability of unlimited data plans drove mobile media in Japan, now it’s driving the US; but in W. Europe, lack of availability is holding up progress.
• All these stats in detail below…
PART C: Mobile marketing, advertising and messaging.
1) SMS is the king of mobile messaging
8 trillion text messages will be sent in 2011.
But consumers are also embracing mobile email, IM and MMS rapidly.
A2P - application to person SMS e.g. automated alerts from banks, offers from retailers, m-tickets is expected to overtake person to person SMS in 2016.
• Is your opt-in CRM database part of that revolution?
2) Mobile ad spend worldwide is predicted to be US$3.3 billion in 2011 sky rocketing to $20.6 billion in 2015, driven by search ads and local ads. In the US over half of U.S. mobile ad spending is local. Asia – Japan particularly – continues to dominate global mobile ad spend.
• With US$2.5 billion in annual mobile ad revenues Google is the main recipient of mobile ad spend.
3) To what types of mobile marketing do people respond best? In the UK and France opt-in SMS gets the best results, in Germany mobile Web ads get the best results.
• All these stats in detail below…
PART D: Consumer mobile behavior
1) What do consumers use their mobiles for? Japanese consumers are still more advanced in mobile behavior, using mobile Web, apps and email more, but US or Europeans text and play more games. Most popular mobile destinations are news and information, weather reports, social networking, search and maps.
• In all countries surveyed more consumers used their browser than apps and only a minority will use Web or apps exclusively.
2) US consumers prefer mobile browsers for banking, travel, shopping, local info, news, video, sports and blogs and prefer apps for games, social media, maps and music.
3) Mobile searches have quadrupled in the last year, for many items one in seven searches are now mobile.
• Did you know 71 percent of smartphone users that see TV, press or online ad, do a mobile search - will they find your mobile site or your competitors’?
• All these stats in detail below…
PART E: Mobile apps, app stores, pricing and failure rates
1) Over 300,000 mobile apps have been developed in three years. Apps have been downloaded 10.9 billion times. But demand for download mobile apps is expected to peak in 2013.
2) The most used mobile apps in the US are games; news; maps; social networking and music. Facebook, Google Maps and The Weather Channel (TWC) rule.
• But does reality match the hype around apps? The average download price of a mobile app is falling rapidly on all vendor app stores, except Android. And 1 in 4 mobile apps once downloaded are never used again.
• All these stats in detail below…
PART F: Mobile payment, NFC, m-commerce, m-ticketing and m-coupons
1) Paying by mobile i.e. m-payments will be worth US$240 billion in 2011 and could be over US$1 trillion by 2015. Purchasing digital goods is the largest segment ahead of physical goods, near-field communications (NFC), m-banking and money transfer. Biggest market today is Japan, but in the future could be China.
2) Japan sets the precedent for m-payment 47 million Japanese have adopted tap-and-go phones, but is expected to take off elsewhere as the world adopts NFC. In China alone, there will be 169 million users of tap-and-go payments in 2013.
3) M-commerce is predicted to reach US$119 billion in 2015, Japan remains king. Top m-commerce retailers globally include: Taobao, Amazon and eBay. The US m-commerce market will be US$31 billion by 2016.
• 1 in 8 mobile subscribers will use m-ticketing in 2015 for airline, rail and bus travel, festivals, cinemas and sports events.
• All these stats in detail below…
PART G: Mobile financial services (MFS) and m-banking
Between 500 million and 1 billion people will access financial services by mobile by 2015, depending on estimates. The MFS market will be dominated Asia, driven by mobile operator-led initiatives in developing nations to bank the unbanked. Remittance/transfers by mobile is growing three times faster than m-banking.
• Will MFS be mobile's killer application?
• All these stats in detail below…
“In the last twelve months, customers around the world have ordered more than US$1 billion of products from Amazon using a mobile device," – Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com (July 2010).
Those statistics in more detail:
PART A: Mobile subscribers; global mobile handset and smartphone market share; world’s top five operators
1) At the end of 2011, there were 6 billion mobile subscriptions, estimates The International Telecommunication Union (2011). That is equivalent to 87 percent of the world population. And is a huge increase from 5.4 billion in 2010 and 4.7 billion mobile subscriptions in 2009.
• Mobile subscribers in the developed world has reached saturation point with at least one cell phone subscription per person. This means market growth is being driven by demand developing world, led by rapid mobile adoption in China and India, the world's most populous nations. These two countries collectively added 300 million new mobile subscriptions in 2010 – that’s more than the total mobile subscribers in the US.
• At the end of 2011 there were 4.5 billion mobile subscriptions in the developing world (76 percent of global subscriptions). Mobile penetration in the developing world now is 79 percent, with Africa being the lowest region worldwide at 53 percent.
• mobiThinking note: Mobile subscriptions outnumber fixed lines 5:1 (more so in developing nations); Mobile broadband outnumbers fixed broadband 2:1. With stats like this, it is easy to see why the experts predict that mobile Web usage will overtake PC-based Web usage. This will happen more quickly in developing nations (if it isn’t happening already) where fixed Web penetration remains low. In developed nations, this will happen more slowly. IDC believes that mobile Web usage will not overtake PC Web usage in the US until 2015. Regardless of the timescale, this inevitability makes your mobile Web strategy more important than your PC Web strategy in the long term.
2) 30 percent of the world’s mobile users live in India and China. Subscribers in each country are rapidly approaching 1 billion. Both dwarf the number of subscribers in third place USA.
• China: 963 million subscribers (71 percent of population) in November 2011 (see table below for operator breakdown), 118 million of these are 3G users.
• India: 884 million subscribers (73 percent of population) in November 2011, up 154 million from November 2010. (TRAI, Jan 2012). 66 percent of mobile subscribers are urban dwellers.
• USA: 322.9 million subscribers (102.4 percent of population) in June 2011 (CTIA).
3) There were 11.1 percent more mobile devices sold in 2011 compared to 2010.
IDC (February 2012): 1,546 million handsets were sold in 2011, up 11.1 percent compared with 2010.
Strategy Analytics (February 2012): 1,551.4 million handsets were sold in 2011, up 14 percent compared with 2010.
3b) The top device manufacturer by market penetration (rather than sales of new handsets – above and below) is Nokia in W.Europe, Samsung in the US and Sharp in Japan. Smartphone penetration in is higher in developed nations than in the rest of the world, but even here the vast majority of devices are still feature phones. These estimates are based surveys conducted by ComScore in October, November, December 2010 (Japan is December only).
4) Smartphone sales showed strong growth worldwide in 2011
IDC (February 2012): Total shipments in 2011 were 491.4 million units up 61.3 percent from 2010. This makes smartphones 31.8 percent of all handsets shipped. Strategy Analytics (February 2012): Total shipments in 2011 were 488.5 million units up 63.1 percent from 2010. This makes smartphones 31.5 percent of all handsets shipped.
| Key Global Telecom Indicators for the World Telecommunication Service Sector in 2011 (all figures are estimates) | |||||||||
| Global | Developed nations | Developing nations | Africa | Arab States | Asia & Pacific | CIS | Europe | The Americas | |
| Mobile cellular subscriptions (millions) | 5,981 | 1,461 | 4,520 | 433 | 349 | 2,897 | 399 | 741 | 969 |
| Per 100 people | 86.7% | 117.8% | 78.8% | 53.0% | 96.7% | 73.9% | 143.0% | 119.5% | 103.3% |
| Fixed telephone lines (millions) | 1,159 | 494 | 665 | 12 | 35 | 511 | 74 | 242 | 268 |
| Per 100 people | 16.6% | 39.8% | 11.6% | 1.4% | 9.7% | 13.0% | 26.3% | 39.1% | 28.5% |
| Active mobile broadband subscriptions (millions) | 1,186 | 701 | 484 | 31 | 48 | 421 | 42 | 336 | 286 |
| Per 100 people | 17.0% | 56.5% | 8.5% | 3.8% | 13.3% | 10.7% | 14.9% | 54.1% | 30.5% |
| Fixed broadband subscriptions (millions) | 591 | 319 | 272 | 1 | 8 | 243 | 27 | 160 | 145 |
| per 100 people | 8.5% | 25.7% | 4.8% | 0.2% | 2.2% | 6.2% | 9.6% | 25.8% | 15.5% |
| Source: International Telecommunication Union (November 2011) | via: mobiThinking | ||||||||
| Mobile subscribers in China by operator November 2011 | |||
| Operator | Subscribers | 3G users | |
| China Mobile | 644 million | 48 million | |
| China Unicom | 196 million | 37 million | |
| China Telecom | 123 million | 33 million | |
| Total | 963 million | 118 million | |
| Sources: China Mobile; China Unicom; China Telecom | via: mobiThinking | ||
| Top five mobile phone manufacturers, by 2011 global sales according to IDC | Top three mobile phone manufacturers, by 2011 global sales according to Strategy Analytics | ||||||||||
| Vendor | Shipments 2011 (millions) | Market share 2011 | Shipments 2010 (millions) | Market share 2010 | Annual growth | Vendor | Shipments 2011 (millions) | Market share 2011 | Shipments 2010 (millions) | Market share 2010 | |
| Nokia | 417.1 | 27.0% | 453.0 | 32.6% | -7.9% | Nokia | 417.1 | 26.9% | 453.0 | 33.3% | |
| Samsung | 329.4 | 21.3% | 280.2 | 20.1% | 17.6% | Samsung | 327.4 | 21.1% | 280.2 | 20.6% | |
| Apple | 93.2 | 6.0% | 47.5 | 3.4% | 96.2% | Apple | 93.0 | 6.0% | 47.5 | 3.5% | |
| LG Electronics | 88.1 | 5.7% | 116.7 | 8.4% | -24.5% | Others | 713.9 | 46.0% | 579.3 | 42.6% | |
| ZTE | 66.1 | 4.3% | 50.5 | 3.6% | 30.9% | ||||||
| Others | 552.1 | 35.7% | 443.6 | 31.9% | 24.5% | ||||||
| Total | 1,546 | 100% | 1,391.5 | 100% | 11.1% | Total | 1,551.4 | 100% | 1,360.0 | 100% | |
| Source: IDC (Feb 2012) | Source: Strategy Analytics (Feb 2012) | via: mobiThinking | |||||||||
| Top mobile manufacturers, by market penetration, Q4 2010, according to ComScore | |||||||
| USA | Japan | Germany | UK | France | Spain | Italy | |
| 1 | Samsung 24.8% | Sharp 25.3% | Nokia 33.1% | Nokia 30.4% | Samsung 34.1% | Nokia 47% | Nokia 47.4% |
| 2 | LG 20.9% | Panasonic 15.0% | Sony Ericsson 18.2% | Samsung 19.4% | Nokia 20.6% | Samsung 15.3% | Samsung 21.4% |
| 3 | Motorola 16.7% | Fujitsu 11.7% | Samsung 17.8% | Sony Ericsson 13.7% | Sony Ericsson 10.7% | LG 10% | LG 7.2% |
| Proportion of population with a smartphone, Q4 2010, according to ComScore | |||||||
| 27% | 33.6% | 38.0% | |||||
| Source: ComScore (February 2011) | Survey group: 27,000 | via: mobiThinking | |||||
| Top five smartphone manufacturers, by 2011 global sales according to IDC | Top three smartphone manufacturers, by 2011 global sales according to Strategy Analytics | ||||||||||
| Vendor | Shipments 2011 (millions) | Market share 2011 | Shipments 2010 (millions) | Market share 2010 | Annual growth | Vendor | Shipments 2011 (millions) | Market share 2011 | Shipments 2010 | Market share 2010 (millions) | |
| Samsung | 94.0 | 19.1% | 22.9 | 7.5% | 310.5% | Samsung | 97.4 | 19.9% | 23.9 | 8.0% | |
| Apple | 93.2 | 19.0% | 47.5 | 15.6% | 96.2% | Apple | 93.0 | 19.0% | 47.5 | 15.9% | |
| Nokia | 77.3 | 15.7% | 100.1 | 32.9% | -22.8% | Nokia | 77.3 | 15.8% | 100.1 | 33.4% | |
| Research In Motion | 51.1 | 10.4% | 48.8 | 16.0% | 4.7% | Others | 220.8 | 45.2% | 128 | 42.7% | |
| HTC | 43.5 | 8.9% | 21.7 | 7.1% | 100.5% | ||||||
| Others | 132.3 | 26.9% | 63.7 | 20.9% | 107.7% | ||||||
| Total | 491.4 | 100.0% | 304.7 | 100.0% | 61.3% | Total | 488.5 | 100% | 299.5 | 100% | |
| Source: IDC (Feb 2011) | Source: Strategy Analytics (Feb 2012) | via: mobiThinking | |||||||||
• mobiThinking reality check on smartphones:
The media tends to overegg the importance of smartphones and Apple in particular. Before media hype lulls you into focusing your marketing/development budget on smartphones or the Apple platform exclusively, consider this: 61.3 percent of handsets sold in 2011 were not smartphones, they were feature phones; 94 percent of all phones sold were not Apple.
N.B. smartphone sales is not the same as market penetration. Market penetration of smartphones will be lower. There are almost 6 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide (Source: ITU), yet only 968.2 million smartphones have been sold in total in 2009, 2010 and 2011, according to IDC i.e. only 16 percent of global mobile subscriptions.
• More analysis on all these numbers.
4b) Android is the top smartphone operating system in 2011.
Canalys (February 2012): finds that 48.8 percent of smartphones shipped in 2011, shipped with Google’s free Android OS.
• Canalys points out that smartphones now outsell PCs.
• Previously Nokia was the leader in smartphones, until its surprise decision to drop its Symbian OS in 2011.
5) Only a fraction of smartphones and tablets are protected by security software, despite a rise in the amount of malware targeted at mobile devices.
Estimates for growth of mobile malware (includes viruses, worms and malicious software used by hackers, such as code inserted into compromised mobile apps) vary greatly, but all expects warn that it is growing very fast.
• BullGuard identified a staggering 2,500 different types of mobile malware in 2010.
• IBM X-Force named 2011 the year of the security breach, predicting that “exploits targeting vulnerabilities that affect mobile operating systems will more than double from 2010”.
Yet most smartphones and tablets have little security protection:
• Canalys (October 2011): Only 4 percent of smartphones and tablet computers shipped in 2010 had some form of mobile security downloaded and installed.
• Juniper Research (August 2011): Less than 1 in 20 smartphones and tablets have third-party security software installed in them, despite a steady increase in threats.
This is expected to change, let by sales to business:
• Canalys: US $759.8 million will be spent on security in 2011 alone, growing at 44 percent annually to be worth US $3 billion in 2015.
• Juniper: By 2016, 277 million mobile devices will have some kind of protection installed, costing mobile users a collective US$3.6 billion. 69 percent of this investment will be made by corporations concerned about corporate data is stored on mobile devices.
Further reading:
• The insider’s guide to mobile security
• Mobile security – implications for your business
6) The top five mobile network operators worldwide: by number of subscribers, revenues, monthly average revenue per user (ARPU), monthly churn (i.e. loyalist customer base) and data as a percentage of total revenues, according to Portio Research:
| Worldwide smartphone market, by operating system, by 2011 global sales according to Canalys | |||
| Operating System | Shipments 2011 (millions) | Market share 2011 | Annual growth |
| Android | 237.7 | 48.8% | 244% |
| iOS | 93.1 | 19.1% | 96% |
| Symbian | 80.1 | 16.4% | -29.1% |
| BlackBerry | 51.4 | 10.5% | 5.0% |
| Bada | 13.2 | 2.7% | 183.1% |
| Windows Phone | 6.8 | 1.4% | -43.3% |
| Others | 5.4 | 1.1% | 14.4% |
| Total | 487.7 | 100% | 62.7% |
| Source: Canalys (Feb 2011) | via: mobiThinking | ||
| Top five operators by different KPIs – worldwide | |||||
| Rank | Subscribers | Total revenues | Monthly ARPU | Monthly churn | Proportion of revenues derived from data |
| 1 | China Mobile | China Mobile | 3 UK | NTT DOCOMO Japan | Smart Philippines |
| 2 | China Unicom | AT&T US | Bouygues France | KDDI Japan | Globe Philippines |
| 3 | Bharti Airtel India | Verizon US | Vodafone Ireland | SingTel Singapore | SoftBank Japan |
| 4 | AT&T US | NTT DOCOMO Japan | O2 Ireland | Chunghwa Taiwan | NTT DOCOMO Japan |
| 5 | Verizon US | Sprint US | Orange Switzerland | T-Mobile Germany | KDDI Japan |
| Source: Portio Research (June 2009) | via: mobiThinking | ||||
mobiThinking note on the Top fives: the most interesting thing is the predominance of Asian mobile operators coming top in both the customer loyalty and data revenues sections. Perhaps this represents different and longer-term priorities than the European networks that come top in average revenue per user. (Note: the analysis in this report is based on 2008 revenues).
7) Mobile operators in developed countries could run out of profit in the next two to four years if they do not change their business models, according to research by Tellabs/Analysys Mason (February 2011). This assumes current trends in demand for data, revenues and costs associated with investing in high speed data networks.
| When mobile operators in developed economies are expected to run out of profit (if expenditure, demand and revenue trends remain the same) | |||
| Region | Worst case scenario | median | Best case scenario |
| North America | Q1, 2013 | Q4, 2013 | Q2, 2014 |
| Developed Asia Pacific | Q3, 2013 | Q3, 2014 | Q1, 2015 |
| Western Europe | Q1, 2014 | Q1, 2015 | Q2, 2015 |
| Source: Tellabs/ Analysys Mason (February 2011) | via: mobiThinking | ||
“The various use cases for consumers will depend on where they are, what time of day and what day of the week. Currently we have television with over 110 million folks. We have Weather.com on the Web which is approaching 70 million and the breakdown specific for mobile apps is fairly even between iOS and Android devices with over 20 million for each of those and then we have 33 million unique folks on the mobile Web.” Scott Jensen, VP, Weather Channel (November 2011) in a video interview with mobiThinking.
• Find out how companies are using mobile to engage their customers in this series of video interviews with Russell Wallach, Live Nation Network • Stephen Gates, Starwood Hotels • Scott Jensen, Weather Channel • Matt Martin, Sam’s Club • Amy Gale, Autotrader Mobile
PART B: Mobile Web
1) There are almost 1.2 billion mobile Web users in the world.According to estimates by The ITU (2011), there are 1.2 billion active mobile-broadband subscriptions in the world. That is 17 percent of the global population.
• Mobile-broadband subscriptions have grown 45 percent annually over the last four years.
• Mobile-broadband subscription outnumber fixed broadband subscriptions 2:1.
• In developed countries mobile-broadband users often also have a fixed-broadband connection, but in developing countries mobile broadband is often the only access method available to people.
2) South Korea and Japan are the leading countries for mobile broadband penetration.
• UK and US are ranked 21st and 24th, respectively, for mobile broadband penetration.
3) There are more mobile Internet users in China than any other country.
The China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC) reports (July 2010): There are 277 million mobile Web users in China, up 43 million in six months. This amounts to 65.9 percent of total web users in China 420 million, the majority of these also access the Web via PC or laptop, but 11.7 percent of Web users exclusively use mobile to access the Web (this works out about 49 million – or more than the number of people that live in Spain).
• If these stats are accurate, then China is on track for having mobile Internet users than there are people in the US - the world’s third largest nation.
• However stats from China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom (November 2011) suggest there are 118 million 3G users in China. While 3G isn’t essential for mobile Web access, it is the minimum requirement for high-speed mobile browsing.
• For more analysis see: Why Asia will (continue to) dominate the mobile Web
4) Japan remains one of the world’s top countries for mobile Web, according to official stats.
• Japan has 122 million mobile subscribers (95 percent of the population) of and 101 million (84 percent of mobile users) are mobile Internet subscribers (TCA, December 2011).
• 99 percent of Japanese subscribers have a 3G handset (required for high-speed mobile). In November 2011 there were 3G handsets: 123 million; mobile subscribers: 124 million (Japan Statistics Bureau, December 2011)
• mobiThinking note: this means that 79 percent of Japanese people have access to the mobile Internet via their handset, but the number regular users could be considerably less.
5) In January 2012, 8.49 percent of Website hits/pageviews come from a handheld mobile device, according to StatCounter.
• Growth in mobile Web penetration is strongest in Asia and Africa, where PC penetration is lower.
• The worldwide leader for mobile pageviews by a considerable margin is Nokia’s Symbian operating system, with 31.89 percent, due to its dominance of mobile phone shipments, particularly in Asia.
• N.B. The above data is pageviews, mobile visitors could be higher because the average mobile visitor surfs less than the average PC visitors. • More analysis here.
6) The percentage of people regularly accessing the mobile Web in Japan and urban China is more than double the US according to surveys by Forrester (June 2011)
7) Many mobile Web users are mobile-only, i.e. they do not, or very rarely also use a desktop, laptop or tablet to access the Web, according to On Device Research.
• In many developing nations, the majority of mobile Web users are mobile-only, highest include Egypt at 70 percent and India at 59 percent. • In many developing nations, the mobile-only tend to be under 25.
• In developed nations, including the US at 25 percent, a large minority of mobile Web users are mobile-only. • In developed nations, in the US particularly, many mobile-only are older people and many come from lower income households
• In Africa the 85 percent of the mobile-only Web users access the Web with a feature phone. • In Africa the top mobile activities for mobile-only users are: downloading games (55 percent); downloading music (54 percent); social networking (52 percent); search (48 percent); email (46 percent).
• Many mobile-only Web users do not have a bank account, in India this is 57 percent of the mobile-only.
• mobiThinking note: The best thing about these stats is that they are generated by m-research. On Device Research has recruited panelists of 1,000+ panelists in each target country that answer questions on mobile via the mobile Web. Find out more: Using mobile Web-based research to deliver insights into the mobile-only generation. Also see
this: Guide to m-research.
8) In 2011 over 85 percent of new handsets will be able to access the mobile Web. Today in US and Western Europe, 90 percent of mobile subscribers have an Internet-ready phone.
• Gartner (March 2010) predicts that in 2011, over 85 percent of handsets shipped globally will include some form of browser.
• In mature markets, such as Western Europe and Japan, approximately 60 percent of handsets shipped will be smartphones with sophisticated browsing capabilities.
• In mature markets, the mobile Web, along with associated Web adaptation tools, will be a leading technology for business to consumer (B2C) mobile applications through 2012, and should be part of every organization's B2C technology portfolio.
• comScore (February 2011) estimates that 90 percent of mobile subscribers in US and Western Europe have a phone that can access the mobile Web. 48 percent of US and 61 percent of W. Europeans have a handset with an HTML browsers (this proportion is increasing fast), the rest have WAP browsers.
• ComScore notes that there are more than 60 different types/versions of mobile browser in use on mobile handsets. This makes mobile Web design more complicated than desktop Web design.
• dotMobi (July 2011) – mobiThinking’s parent company – estimates that there are 6,500 distinct Web-capable mobile devices models out there – that’s ignoring devices that only vary in color or phones that have be renamed/relabeled by operators etc. The majority of these are not smartphones. The specifications/features of these devices vary massively, screen sizes particularly.
• ABI Research (July 2011) predicts that 2.1 billion mobile devices will have HTML5 browsers by 2016 (up from 109 million in 2010). HTML5 will help to deliver a richer, more interactive mobile Web experience, including being able to play video without needing a plug such as the Adobe Flash Player.
• mobiThinking note on smartphones and HTML browsers: just because people may be able to view your PC Website with a mobile device with an HTML browser, doesn’t mean it is a pleasant or fulfilling experience. However big the device’s screen is, viewing a PC Website requires scrolling left and right and up and down. Don’t forget that most web-enabled phones are not smartphones and have much smaller screens. However good the mobile connection, large images will be slow to load. Many technologies commonly used on PC sites, such as Flash, do not work, or work well, on many handsets, including Apple. What’s more, mobile users have different requirements from desktop Web users and provide different opportunities for your business.
| Active mobile broadband subscriptions by region in 2010 and 2011 (2011 figures are estimates) | |||||||||
| Global | Developed nations | Developing nations | Africa | Arab States | Asia & Pacific | CIS | Europe | The Americas | |
| Active mobile broadband subscriptions 2011 (millions) | 1,186 | 701 | 484 | 31 | 48 | 421 | 42 | 336 | 286 |
| Per 100 people 2011 | 17.0% | 56.5% | 8.5% | 3.8% | 13.3% | 10.7% | 14.9% | 54.1% | 30.5% |
| Active mobile broadband subscriptions 2010 (millions) | 870 | 569 | 301 | 20 | 36 | 289 | 31 | 254 | 224 |
| Per 100 people 2010 | 12.6% | 46.2% | 5.3% | 2.5% | 10.2% | 7.4% | 11.2% | 41.3% | 24.1% |
| Source: International Telecommunication Union (November 2011) | via: mobiThinking | ||||||||
| Top 10 countries by active mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants | |||||
| Rank | Country | Percentage | Rank | Country | Percentage |
| 1 | Korea (Rep.) | 91.0 | 6 | Hong Kong, China | 74.5 |
| 2 | Japan | 87.8 | 7 | Portugal | 72.5 |
| 3 | Sweden | 84.0 | 8 | Luxembourg | 72.1 |
| 4 | Australia | 82.7 | 9 | Singapore | 69.7 |
| 5 | Finland | 78.1 | 10 | Austria | 67.4 |
| Source: ITU and Wireless Intelligence (2011) | via: mobiThinking | ||||
| Proportion of global Web pageviews from mobile devices, by region, in Jan 2011 and Jan 2012 | |||||||
| Global | Africa | Asia | Europe | North America | Oceana | South America | |
| Mobile pageviews in Jan 2012 | 8.49% | 19.17% | 14.32% | 4.22% | 8.03% | 7.75% | 2.88% |
| Mobile pageviews in Jan 2011 | 4.3% | 6.33% | 6.06% | 2.17% | 5.78% | 3.69% | 1.88% |
| Top mobile operating system for pageviews, by region, in Jan 2012 | |||||||
| 1 | Symbian 31.89% | Symbian 70.94% | Symbian 55.42% | iOS 41.19% | iOS 44.29% | iOS 70.62% | Symbian 33.73% |
| 2 | iOS 24.04% | Samsung 7.23% | Android 13.43% | Android 30.89% | Android 38.63% | Android 20.84% | Android 26.93% |
| 3 | Android 23.21% | Android 3.79 | Samsung 10.53% | BlackBerry 12.85% | BlackBerry 7.52% | Symbian 3.93% | iOS 11.39% |
| Source: StatCounter (February 2012) | via: mobiThinking | ||||||
| Percentage of mobile subscribers accessing mobile Web at least monthly | |||
| Country | Percentage | Country | Percentage |
| Japan | 47% | Hong Kong (China) | 16% |
| Urban China | 43% | Europe | 12% |
| United States | 22% | Urban India | 8% |
| Source: Forrester (June 2011) | via: mobiThinking | ||
| Percentage of mobile Web users who never or infrequently use the desktop Web | |||
| Country | Percentage mobile-only | Country | Percentage mobile-only |
| Egypt | 70% | Indonesia | 44% |
| India | 59% | Thailand | 32% |
| South Africa | 57% | China | 30% |
| Ghana | 55% | US | 25% |
| Kenya | 54% | UK | 22% |
| Nigeria | 50% | Russia | 19% |
| Source: On Device Research (December 2010) | Survey group: 15,204 | via: mobiThinking | |
• For more on HTML5 see these video interviews: Why HTML5 changes everything – Dimitrios Kontarinis, VP of innovation, Velti and Meeting the needs of mobile customers with mobile Web/HTML5 – Stephen Gates, Starwood Hotels
• For more on why your site needs to identify and react to mobile visitors see this Guide to device detection.
9) 45 percent of the world’s population is now covered by a 3G mobile network (required for fast mobile Internet access), according to The ITU (2011).
• 3G networks are now been launched in 159 countries. Some countries such as Sweden, Norway, Ukraine and United States are already moving to 4G.
10) Top regions and countries for penetration of 3G handsets according to Informa and Ovum via Morgan Stanley:
| Top regions for penetration of 3G handsets according to Ovum | Top 10 countries for penetration of 3G handsets according to Informa | ||||
| Region | 2009 | 2014 | Country | % | |
| Western Europe | 39% | 92% | Japan | 90% | |
| North America | 38% | 74% | South Korea | 75% | |
| Eastern Europe | 9% | 40% | Australia | 56% | |
| AsiaPac (without Japan) | 7% | 37% | Singapore | 44% | |
| Japan | 91% | 100% | Israel | 46% | |
| Middle East & Africa | 7% | 35% | Spain | 41% | |
| South & Central America | 4% | 17% | USA | 41% | |
| Sweden | 40% | ||||
| Austria | 40% | ||||
| Portugal | 35% | ||||
| Italy | 34% | ||||
| Global | 15% | 43% | Global | 12% | |
| Source: Morgan Stanley (April 2010) | Morgan Stanley | via: mobiThinking | |||
mobiThinking note on 3G: Morgan Stanley states that "3G is key to success of mobile Internet"; however while Japan (king of the mobile Web) appears to be testimony to this conclusion, China claims to have the highest mobile Internet usage in the world despite low 3G handset penetration.
11) More widespread availability of unlimited data plans has helped the US overtake and extend its lead in mobile media use (mobile Web, apps, content downloads etc) over Western Europe.
• ComScore finds that where there are now 29 percent of US subscribers have unlimited plans, there are only 8 percent in the EU5 (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain). ComScore does not provide comparable data for Japan, where mobile media penetration is 75 percent dwarfing both the US and EU5.
• But Infinita estimates that 75 percent of Japanese are on unlimited plans (it was first introduced in 2004), while over 95 percent have 3G handsets. In this Guide to Japan, Infinita states that penetration of unlimited data is the main reason mobile Web in Japan is so advanced.
| Mobile Market Enablers in the U.S and W. Europe, Q4 2010, according to ComScore | ||||
| Country | Unlimited data plans | Smartphone penetration | 3G/4G handset ownership | Mobile media usage |
| US | 29% | 27% | 50% | 47% |
| W.Europe (EU5) | 8% | 31.1% | 47.1% | 37% |
| Japan | 75% | |||
| Source: ComScore (February 2011) | Survey group: 27,000 | via: mobiThinking | ||
“We're also seeing a huge positive revenue impact from Mobile, which has grown 2.5 times in the last 12 months to a run rate of over $2.5 billion.” Larry Page, CEO, Google.
“Let's turn to mobile advertising. Larry mentioned $2.5 billion as a run rate. Our revenue growth continues to accelerate even in Mobile, driven primarily by mobile search… Many advertisers have greatly increased the size and frequency of their mobile campaigns. Mobile is becoming a must-have. This includes clients like InterContinental Hotels Group, which spans pretty much across our entire portfolio of properties, including Mobile search, Mobile GDN and AdMob.” Nikesh Arora, SVP, Google. Q3 2011 Earnings Call October, 2011
• There are 200 million mobile video playbacks every day on YouTube – YouTube internal data.
Brush up on your mobile Web and mobile marketing skills at one of these conferences. mobiThinking has negotiated great discounts and free tickets to give away: • January: Mobile Commerce Mexico and Central America (Mexico City) • 3rd Mobile Commerce Conference (San Francisco, USA) • February: M-Days (Frankfurt, Germany) • Mobile LATAM (Miami, USA) • March: The Mobile Marketing Conference (Miami, USA) • The BLN Making it Mobile Forum (London, UK) • 4G Device World Summit (Seoul, South Korea) • April: Mobile Payments & NFC Asia 2011 (Hong Kong) • MMA Forum Asia (Singapore).
• Need a regular fix of mobile stats? http://twitter.com/#!/mobithinking
PART C: Mobile marketing, advertising and messaging
1) SMS is the king of mobile messaging.• Portio Research (January 2011): 6.9 SMS trillion messages were sent in 2010. SMS traffic is expected to break 8 trillion in 2011.
• 249 billion MMS were sent, in 2010.
• 480.6 million users of mobile email in 2010, expected to quadruple by 2015.
• 311.2 million users of mobile instant messaging (IM) in 2010, expected to grow to 1.6 trillion by 2015.
• Portio says: “Messaging is still king. We want to be absolutely clear about this. Messaging still dominates [mobile operators’] non-voice revenues worldwide”. Worldwide mobile messaging market will be worth over US$200 billion in 2011 (SMS is $127 billion of this), reaching $334.7 billion by 2015.
• Juniper Research (May 2011): By 2016, application-to-person (A2P) messaging will overtake person-to-person (texting) messaging, being worth more than US$70bn.
• A2P messaging includes messages to or from an application to or from a large number of customers in financial services, advertising, marketing, business administration, ticketing, television voting etc.
• Juniper Research (June 2011): Mobile IM users will exceed 1.3 billion by 2016. “While IM services have some advantages, such as real-time communication and apparent absence of cost, the market is fragmented by different services [AOL’s AIM, Blackberry Messenger, Microsoft’s Windows Live, Skype and Yahoo! Messenger] which cannot communicate with each other.”
2) Expenditure on mobile advertising and marketing worldwide:
Gartner predicts mobile ad revenue will be US$3.3 billion in 2011. This will sky rocket to $20.6 billion in 2015, more than doubling each year. It will continue to grow thereafter.
• Search ads and location ads (paid-for positioning on maps and augmented reality apps) will deliver the highest revenue, while video/audio ads will see the fastest growth through 2015.
• Brand spending on mobile advertising will grow from 0.5 percent of the total advertising budget in 2010 to over 4 percent in 2015.
• Asia will continue to dominate global mobile ad spend, but to a lessening degree from 49.2 percent of mobile ad revenue in 2011 to 33.6 percent in 2015.
• See: Q&A with Gartner for implications.
• See: What makes Asia Pacific the most exciting mobile market in the world? Interview with Rohit Dadwal, MD Asia Pacific, MMA.
| Mobile Advertising Revenue by Region, Worldwide, 2010-2015 (Millions of Dollars), according to Gartner | |||
| Region | 2010 | 2011 | 2015 |
| North America | 304.3 | 701.7 | 5,791.4 |
| Western Europe | 257.1 | 569.3 | 5,131.9 |
| Asia/Pacific and Japan | 868.8 | 1,628.5 | 6,925.0 |
| Rest of the World | 196.9 | 410.4 | 2,761.7 |
| Total | 1,627.1 | 3,309.9 | 20,610.0 |
| Source: Gartner (June 2011) | via: mobiThinking | ||
• Strategy Analytics (March 2010): Global expenditure on mobile advertising (defined as placing an advert within a variety of mobile media formats including mobile Internet, games and applications, mobile video, mobile TV, streaming music, text and media alerts) is estimated at US$3.6 billion in 2009, growing to US$38 billion in 2015.
ABI Research (May 2009): Global expenditure on mobile marketing and advertising in 2009 was $7.5 billion, forecasted to be $11.5 billion in 2010, $16.3 billion in 2011 and $21.2 billion in 2012.
Juniper Research (August 2009): Total advertising expenditure on mobile is expected to rise from just over US$1.4bn in 2009 to US$6 billion n in 2014. Of this, ad spend on mobile Internet was estimated to be US$500 million in 2009. The report also pointed out that:
• Where fixed Internet access is limited, mobile is the dominant means of accessing the Internet: in India, mobile accounted for nearly 90 percent of all Internet users in 2008.
• Brands can build up much more detailed profiles of user responses compared to online and plan follow-up campaigns accordingly.
3) Japan rules the roost when it comes to mobile advertising, based on its highly developed mobile Web.
Mobile marketing and advertising expenditures in Japan in 2009 was 103.1 billion Yen, that's US$1.14 billion (according to Dentsu). Year-on-year growth was 12.9 percent. There are lots more juicy stats in this Guide to mobile in Japan
4) More than half of U.S. mobile ad spending is local.
BIA/Kelsey (June 2011): U.S. mobile ad spending will grow from US$790 million in 2010 to $4 billion in 2015. Local ad spend will grow from US$404 million to $2.8 billion.
• This makes locally targeted mobile ads 51 percent of overall U.S. mobile ad spending, growing to 70 percent by 2015.
• Mobile local advertising includes ads that target users in specific locations or contain location-specific calls to action.
• Among the drivers of mobile ad revenue growth are smartphone penetration, mobile Web usage and related increases in ad inventory. BIA/Kelsey expects large brand advertisers to evolve their campaign objectives to the capabilities of the mobile device — most notably, location awareness.
• emarketer.com (October 2010): US expenditure on mobile advertising and marketing is estimated to be US$416 million in 2009; $743 million in 2010 and will be $1,102 in 2011. In 2010 mobile ad formats were dominated by messaging ($327 million), but display ($202 million) and search ($185 million) will catch up in 2012. Video lags at ($28 million).
5) The top mobile ad networks in the US are Google, Millennial Media, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Jumptap, estimates IDC (December 2011).
• Based on its calculations of network revenues, IDC estimates that expenditure on mobile ad expenditure in US was $2.1 billion in 2011 (which is higher than other estimates).
• 70 percent of mobile ad budgets are spent on search advertising, with 30 percent spent on mobile display adverting.
• Google takes the lion’s share of combined search and display revenue with 70 percent market share.
• no other network taking more than 5 percent. The next biggest mobile ad networks are, in order, Millennial Media, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Jumptap.
• mobiThinking note: Ad networks remain very cagy on their revenues. When Millennial Media announced its IPO it revealed its revenues and the extent of its losses for the first time. This has made it difficult for analysts and pundits to gauge which ad network is biggest… though who says that biggest is best?
Further reading: • Analysis of IDC’s stats • Implications of Millennial Media’s IPO • Guide to mobile ad networks (with in-depth profiles of Millennial, Microsoft, Jumptap and many other networks).
6) Google’s gross annual revenue from mobile advertising is over US$2.5 billion per year, according to Google’s Q3 2011 earnings call (October 2011). Mobile search advertising rather than display advertising is the main contributor.
• In 2010, Google declared its annual mobile ad revenue to be US$1 billion. Gartner, estimates that Google’s US$1 billion would give it 70 percent of the global mobile ad market.
7) How many people see and react to mobile ads? According to consumer research by The MMA and Lightspeed Research (October 2010), in UK, France and Germany, 45 percent of consumers (especially younger people) noticed mobile advertising and of these, 29 percent responded to it. Of those that responded to the ads, in Germany 49 percent, UK 47 percent and in France 22 percent went on to make a purchase.
• The most effective form of ads was opt-in SMS in the UK (40 percent said they were more likely to respond to these) and in France (21 percent); while in Germany it was mobile Web ads (27 percent).
• Time sensitive special offers or discounts (especially m-coupons) were most likely to lead to purchase.
• People were most likely to purchase mobile content such as applications, music and games.
8) Why advertisers need a mobile-friendly site according Google/Ipsos (US consumer Mobile Movement survey April 2011)
• Of people who react to seeing a mobile ad: 42 percent click on the mobile ad; 35 percent visit the advertiser’s site; 32 percent search for more information on their phone; 49 percent make a purchase and 27 percent call the business.
• 71 percent of smartphone users that see TV, press or online ad, do a mobile search for more information.
• But 79 percent of large online advertisers still do not have a mobile optimized site, according to Google/Kelsey 2010.
Draw inspiration from award-winning mobile sites, apps and campaigns, from mobiThinking’s library of over 75 video case studies from Cannes Lions, MMA Awards, EMMAS, Mobi Awards and World Summit Mobile Awards:
• mobiThinking guide to mobile industry awards
• Keep your finger on the pulse. We’ll let you know when we add new statistics via Twitter. Follow us for updates: @mobithinking
PART D: Consumer mobile behavior
1) What do consumers use their mobiles for? According to ComScore's excellent 2010 Mobile Year in Review (February 2011) Japanese consumers are still much more advanced in their mobile usage, with 55.4 percent accessing the mobile Web and 57.1 percent using email, but US and European consumers are catching on fast.• Even in developed nations (where smartphone penetration is higher), more people use mobile Web than mobile apps. Very few use either mobile apps or mobile Web exclusively. Only 6 percent of app users in the US and 7 percent in Europe don’t use their browser. While 8 percent of browser users in the US and Europe don’t use apps.
“Even though applications received much more attention by the media throughout 2010, our analysis in the US and the EU5 region showed that by a small margin, application usage is still second to browser usage when it comes to the mobile web… Further analysis of browser use and application access shows that the two activities are not mutually exclusive… Instead of the browser vs. app question being an ‘either or’ proposition, the mobile web audience has quickly come to expect and utilize both browsing and apps as an integral parts of the mobile web experience.” ComScore (February 2011).
| Mobile behavior in United States, EU5 (UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy) and Japan – October, November, December 2010 Percent of total mobile audience (Age 13+) | |||
| United States | Europe | Japan | |
| Used connected media (browser, app or download) | 46.7% | 41.1% | 76.8% |
| Used browser | 36.4% | 28.8% | 55.4% |
| Used application | 34.4% | 28.0% | 53.3% |
| Used messaging | |||
| Sent text message | 68.0% | 82.7% | 41.6% |
| Instant messaging | 17.2% | 14.2% | 3.6% |
| 30.5% | 22.2% | 57.1% | |
| Accessed entertainment/social media | |||
| Took photos | 52.4% | 57.5% | 62.9% |
| Social networking or blog | 24.7% | 18.0% | 19.3% |
| Played games | 23.2% | 25.3% | 16.3% |
| Recorded video | 20.2% | 26.1% | 15.8% |
| Listened to music | 15.7% | 25.0% | 12.9% |
| Watched TV and/or video | 5.6% | 5.7% | 22.8% |
| Accessed financial services | |||
| Bank accounts | 11.4% | 8.0% | 7.0% |
| Financial news or stock quotes | 10.2% | 8.0% | 16.5% |
| Accessed news, sports, weather, search, retail, travel, reference | |||
| News and information | 39.5% | 32.2% | 57.6% |
| Weather reports | 25.2% | 16.4% | 34.7% |
| Search | 21.4% | 14.9% | 31.5% |
| Maps | 17.8% | 13.0% | 17.1% |
| Sports news | 15.8% | 12.0% | 18.2% |
| Restaurant info | 10.0% | 6.5% | 9.7% |
| Traffic reports | 8.4% | 7.4% | 14.0% |
| Classifieds | 7.3% | 4.8% | 3.6% |
| Retail site | 6.5% | 5.2% | 8.5% |
| Travel service | 4.4% | 4.6% | 2.9% |
| Source: comScore MobiLens (Feb 2011) | via: mobiThinking | ||
• Read the insiders’ guides to mobile in: • Japan; • France; • Germany; • USA; • UK; • Spain.
2) US consumers prefer browser to apps for most mobile activities, according to Keynote/Adobe (survey of 1,200 U.S. consumers, mostly smartphone users, October 2010)
• Accessing maps and directions is the no. 1 mobile activity, followed by social networking, accessing local information and reading news.
• Respondents generally favor the browser experience over downloadable mobile apps, except when it comes to games, social media, maps and music.
• Consumers report equal satisfaction levels with their browser and app experiences, and spend nearly equal amounts of time interacting with each.
• “To maximize reach, invest in a mobile-optimized web experience and look beyond a single device.” – Adobe/Keynote.
| US consumers’ favorite mobile activities and preferences for accessing the activity via app or browser | |||
| Category | Participated | Prefer apps | Prefer browser |
| Media and Entertainment: | |||
| Social networking | 76% | 54% | 46% |
| Local info | 73% | 46% | 54% |
| News | 68% | 37% | 63% |
| Music | 63% | 55% | 45% |
| Games | 61% | 61% | 39% |
| Video | 56% | 42% | 58% |
| Sports | 42% | 33% | 67% |
| Blogs/blogging | 41% | 25% | 75% |
| Product reviews | 34% | 22% | 78% |
| Travel and mapping: | |||
| Maps/directions | 81% | 52% | 48% |
| Research travel | 47% | 25% | 75% |
| Check travel reviews | 43% | 23% | 77% |
| Check travel itinerary | 39% | 32% | 68% |
| Banking and finance: | |||
| Check bank account | 67% | 42% | 58% |
| Conduct bank transactions | 51% | 39% | 61% |
| Budgeting | 43% | 44% | 56% |
| Shopping: | |||
| For every shopping activity, including researching products and prices, reviews, promotions and purchasing products, most respondents (61-81%) preferred browser to native app. | |||
| Source: Keynote/Adobe (October 2010) | via: mobiThinking | ||
• mobiThinking note on mobile Web v mobile apps: both the results of the ComScore and the Keynote/Adobe research makes a mockery of the people who claimed the download app would kill the mobile Web. Despite all the media hype and unfathomable amounts of money invested in developing and promoting apps for proprietary handsets, mobile consumers still use and prefer the mobile Web to mobile apps… and they always will.
But many users prefer mobile apps for certain activities – particularly those that they use frequently and where they are loyal to one provider e.g. mapping and social networking. That’s why mobiThinking also has little time for the equally naïve counter argument that the mobile Web will kill the native app.
• For more on mobile apps see: Native v Web apps • Do mobile apps deliver ROI?.
3) In China, the most popular activity is mobile IM, followed by search.
CINIC (July 2010) reports that the most popular activities in China (which its own data suggests is the world’s largest mobile Web community) are: instant messaging (62 percent); search (48 percent); web music (45 percent); web literature (43 percent); social networking 36 percent; games (21 percent); video (20 percent); email (16 percent); and m-commerce (6 percent).
• For more mobile in China see this video: What marketers need to know about mobile in China – Jia Zheng, AKQA
4) Mobile searches have quadrupled in the last year, according to Google, for many items one in seven searches are now mobile.
• 1 in 3 mobile searches are local. After looking up a local business on their smartphone, 61 percent of users called the business and 59 percent visited.
• 79 percent of smartphone users use their smartphones to help with shopping
• 71 percent of smartphone users that see TV, press or online ad, do a mobile search for more information, but 79 percent of large online advertisers still do not have a mobile optimized site.
“It is true across the board. Roughly one in seven searches, even in the smaller categories, are happening on a mobile phone, but how many of you are putting one seventh of your resources into mobile – anyone who hasn’t got mobile only business? Your customer is trying to engage you… it would be like not doing business with your customers on Thursdays.” Jason Spero, Google (Feb 2011).
| Percentage of searches that are via a mobile device | |
| Category | Proportion of searches that are mobile |
| Restaurants | 29.6% |
| Automotive | 16.8% |
| Consumer electronics | 15.5% |
| Finance and insurance | 15.4%; |
| Beauty and personal | 14.9% |
| Source: Internal Google Data (February 2011) | via: mobiThinking |
“Whether to have a mobile site or a mobile app and which to develop first depends on what kind of product you have. If most people are going to find you through search then you should optimize your site for mobile Web, but if you think you have a big enough fan base and you can cut through the clutter of getting people to download your app, then you can have a more immersive experience by creating an app.” Chet Fenster, MEC Entertainment (November 2011).
• Get your mobile strategy onto the right track with this series of video interviews with the experts from the top creative, interactive and mobile agencies (filmed September-November 2011): • Chet Fenster, MEC • Mike Yonker, Rockfish • ILICCO ELIA, LBi • Russ Lidstone, Euro RSCG • Phillip Clement, Bemoko • Christian Louca, YOC
Part E: Mobile apps
1) In three years over 300,000 mobile apps have been developed• IDC (December 2010): In 2010 these 300,000+ applications were downloaded 10.9 billion times. IDC predicts that global downloads will reach 76.9 billion in 2014 and will be worth US$35 billion.
• ABI Research (October 2011): Predicts that there will be 29 billion apps downloaded in 2011, up from 9 billion in 2010. In Q2 Android overtook Apple in terms of app downloads with 44 percent of downloads, compared to Apple’s 31 percent.
• Canalys (June 2011): Predicts that direct revenue from the sale of apps, in-app purchases and subscriptions across smartphones and tablets will be $7.3 billion in 2011 rising to $36.7 billion by 2015.
• Canalys expects MNOs to take more of a share of app revenues, exploiting their relationships with the customer and the serious problem of application discovery for both developers and users in the overcrowded vendor app stores.
2) Demand for app stores is expected to peak in 2013.
• ABI Research (May 2010) predicts that app stores will slowly decline as subscribers migrate from download apps to mobile Web sites and more popular download apps, such as social networking, are preloaded on mobile devices.
3) The average price of a mobile app is falling rapidly on all vendor app stores, except Android.
• The Distimo report (January 2011) finds that in December the average the cost of downloading an app was considerably cheaper than it was in January 2010. Distimo makes analytics tools for mobile apps.
| Change in price of a download app over 12 months, 2010 according to Distimo | |||||
| App store | Apple | Blackberry | Ovi (Nokia) | Android | |
| Number of apps | 300,000 | 18,000 | 130,000 | 25,000 | |
| Price change | All apps | -12 | -24 | +1 | -29 |
| Top 100 apps | -19 | -24 | -9 | -61 | |
| Source: The Distimo report (January 2011) | via: mobiThinking | ||||
4) One in four mobile apps once downloaded is never used again.
• A study by Localytics (January 2010) found that many apps are downloaded, tried once and then discarded.
• “Tracking downloads is often a first step to gauging an app’s success, but download stats often provide an incomplete and inflated view. High download numbers always feel great, but if those customers never open the app or abandon it after just a few uses, those high download numbers are really part of a high churn rate.” – Localytics study (Localytics makes analytics tools for mobile apps).
| Number of apps downloaded and used just once according to Localytics | ||||
| Quarter | January-March 2010 | April-June 2010 | July-September 2010 | October-December 2010 |
| Proportion of apps used only once | 22% | 26% | 26% | 26% |
| Source: Localytics (January 2011) | via: mobiThinking | |||
• mobiThinking note on mobile apps: some app stores, including the largest, Apple, keep download stats for individual apps a secret, which saves the publishers from embarrassment. Thus you will only hear download figures for the more successful apps, but while these sound impressive, they don’t mean much without the retention rate i.e. how many people are still using the app a week, month, or year later.
5) The most used apps across all smartphones – note that’s used as opposed to downloaded – in the US according to Nielsen (June 2010), are Facebook, Google Maps and The Weather Channel (TWC). The most popular categories are games; news; maps; social networking and music.
• On average US feature-phone users have 10 apps on board and smartphone users have 22 apps (of which iPhone users have the most with 37).
• The Facebook App has been downloaded 100 million times from the independent app store GetJar, according to GetJar (December 2010) (making this the most downloaded app from any app store).
mobiThinking says: the irony is that this is not a download app it’s a short cut to the Facebook mobile site – Facebook is a Web app, available for anyone with any Web-enabled handset.
• For more on mobile apps see: It’s all about the design • Native v Web apps • Do mobile apps deliver ROI? • Q&A with GetJar.
Searching for the right mobile agency or mobile ad network?
• mobiThinking guide to mobile agencies
• mobiThinking guide to mobile ad networks
• We update our stats regularly. Follow us on Twitter for updates: @mobithinking
Part F: Mobile payment, including m-commerce, near-field communications/contactless payments, m-ticketing and m-coupons.
1) Worldwide mobile payments (m-payments) are growing strongly, but will still only be worth a fraction of e-commerce payments:• N.B. definitions of m-payments may vary.
• Gartner (July 2011): there will be 141.1 million m-payment users in 2011 (up 38.2 percent from 2010), m-payments will total US $86.1 billion in 2011 (up 75.9 percent from 2010). This reduces previous forecasts.
• Money transfers and prepaid top-ups account for most of m-payments in developing markets.
• Merchandise purchases (e.g. via Amazon, eBay and Apple App Store) account for most of m-payments in developed markets.
• NFC is being overhyped and will not be mainstream for at least four years. SMS and USSD will continue to dominate payments in developing markets and WAP payments will dominate in developed world.
• Yankee Group (June 2011): Global mobile transactions predicted to be US$241 billion in 2011 growing to more than $1 Trillion by 2015.
• EMEA is the mobile money hot spot, says Yankee, accounting for 41 percent of mobile transactions value in 2011, compared to 35 percent in North America, 22 percent in Asia-Pacific and just 1 percent in Latin America.
• Portio Research (March 2010): There were 81.3 million people worldwide using their mobile device to make payments (including in-app payments, mobile ticketing and mobile coupons) in 2009. By the end of 2014, this is forecasted to rise to nearly 490 million (8 percent of mobile subscribers).
• The volume of m-payments i.e. face value of purchases and transactions was US$68.7 billion in 2009, rising to US$633.4 billion by end-2014.
• Juniper Research (July 2011 ): Total value of mobile payments for digital and physical goods, money transfers and NFC (Near Field Communications) transactions will reach $670bn by 2015, up from $240bn this year.
• Estimates include mobile ticketing, NFC contactless payments, physical goods purchases and money transfers.
• Active mobile money users will double by 2013.
• Digital goods is the largest segment and will account for nearly 40% of the market in 2015.
• Juniper Research (June 2011): 1.8 billion consumers globally will buy digital goods via their mobile in 2011, this will rise to 2.5 billion in 2015.
For example, in 2015, more than 400 million people on the Indian Sub-Continent will purchase digital goods via mobile.
• But IDC (May 2010) believes that in EMEA, m-payments will take off slower than m-banking, forecasting that less than 13 percent of mobile subscribers will be registered to use m-payments and volume of m-payments will be no more than $125 billion. Thus m-payments will take off slower than many industry observers hope, due to the complexity and set-up costs for retailers. However, strong growth in m-banking will lay the foundations for growth in mobile payments.
2) While the rest of the world trial/dream of payment by mobile, in Japan it is already a way of life.
ComScore (February 2011) research indicates that in December 2010 alone, 9.8 million or 10 percent of Japanese mobile subscribers used their mobile wallet to make a purchase. 7.6 million consumers made a purchase in a retail/convenience store; 3.2 million purchased from a vending machine; 2.7 million paid for public transport; 2.6 million purchased in a grocery stores; and 1.5 million paid a restaurant bill all using their mobile phone, instead of cash, card or check.
• 47 million Japanese have adopted tap-and-go phones in three years – this is one of the fastest roll outs of electronic products in human history. East Asians will continue lead this market because governments and industry stop inter-industry haggling enabling projects that benefit the nation go ahead. (IDTechEx (R&M), Feb 2011).
3) But tap-and-go m-payments will take off elsewhere as the world adopts near-field communications and more NFC-enabled phones hit the market:
• Juniper Research (June 2011): Global NFC m-payment transactions will be almost US$50 billion worldwide by 2014. 20 countries are expected to launch NFC services in the next 18 months.
• Yankee Group (June 2011): There will be 7 million NFC-enabled phones in 2011 growing to 203 million in 2015.
• Juniper Research (April 2011): Almost 300 million or 1 in 5 or smartphones worldwide will be NFC-enabled by 2014.
• IE Market Research (July 2010): NFC will be 32.8 percent of global m-payments transactions – estimated at US$1.13 trillion – in 2014. Volume shipments of NFC phones are expected in Western Europe and North America in 2011.
• Frost & Sullivan (February 2011): 863 million units or 53 percent of new handsets will be NFC-enabled in 2015. The total payment value for NFC globally will exceed €110 billion in 2015.
• Celent (November 2010): There will be 169 million users of mobile contactless payment in China in 2013. Total number of m-payment users will be 410 million, making China the largest m-payments market in the world.
• NFC Chip Makers predict there will be at least 40-50 million NFC phones on the market by 2011, based on orders for NFC chip sets (NFC Times, Oct, 2010).
• mobiThinking note on NFC: recent announcements from everyone from Google to Vodafone has created a media frenzy around NFC. The fact is that seven years after the foundation of the NFC forum there are almost no NFC phones on the market. NFC more than any other technology requires close cooperation of all parties – this was the secret of success of FeliCa in Japan (which isn’t NFC, but the model is similar). Find out more: The essential ingredients for the success of NFC
4) Shopping on the mobile Web, i.e. m-commerce will reach US$119 billion in 2015, predicts ABI Research(February 2010), that’s about 8 percent of the total e-commerce market:
• Today, Japan is king of m-commerce, where mobile Web shopping exceeded US$10 billion in 2009, making the US$1.2 billion bought in the US by mobile look trifling.
For more insight on Japan, see this: guide to mobile in Japan
• M-commerce in Europe is expected to outpace the US by the end of 2010.
• Long-term growth in m-commerce will come from developing nations where mobile is virtually the only way to access the Internet.
5) In the US, m-commerce revenues are expected to hit $6 billion by the end of 2011, growing to $31 billion by 2016, according to Forrester Research (June 2011).
• But m-commerce will only be 2 percent of e-commerce in 2011 and 7 percent of e-commerce in 2016.
• m-commerce includes mobile media and content, retail, travel, coupons/deals, and services
• 91 percent of online retailers in the US have a mobile strategy in place or in development, according to Shop.org/Forrester Research (May 2011)
• 48 percent of US retailers surveyed had a mobile-optimized website; 35 percent had deployed an iPhone app; 15 percent deployed an Android app; 15 percent had deployed an iPad app.
6) Four out of five US smartphone owners, use phone to help with shopping, according to Google/Ipsos (April 2011). A survey of 5013 US smartphone owners found:
• 79 percent use a smartphone to help with shopping and 70 percent use phone in store.
• Of those: 54 percent located a retailer; 49 percent compare prices to help decide; 34 percent search in-store inventory; 44 percent read reviews and product info; 46 percent called a retailer; 40 percent looked for promotions and discounts; 28 percent used a discount coupon on phone.
• 74 percent of smartphone shoppers have made purchase following research on phone.
• Of those: 76 percent purchased in store; 59 percent purchased on their PCs; 35 percent purchased on their smartphones; 27 percent purchased via a mobile site; 22 percent purchased through a mobile app.
• The average annual spend on mobile purchases was US$300.
7) Top m-commerce retailers:
• In 2009, the top m-commerce retailer according to Altimeter Group (June 2010) was Taobao, (part of Chinese Web giant Alibaba Group) with an estimated $800 million in revenues.
• “In the last twelve months, customers around the world have ordered more than US$1 billion of products from Amazon using a mobile device," according to Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com (July 2010).
• On eBay, in 2011, people purchased $5 billion of goods using their mobile. In 2012, eBay projects this will rise to $8 billion. (eBay, January 2012).
• PayPal expects to see $7 billion in mobile payment volume in 2012. (PayPal, January 2012).
mobiThinking note on eBay and Paypal: The eBay figure is gross merchandise volume (GMV), which is the amount of goods bought and sold in the market place, rather than actual revenue made by eBay, which takes a percentage of sales over its platform. PayPal, is an online payment system, owned by eBay. eBay encourages its customers to use PayPal, thus there could be considerable overlap between the eBay and the PayPal figures.
8) 1 in 8 mobile subscribers will use m-ticketing in 2015 for airline, rail and bus travel, festivals, cinemas and sports events.
• Jupiter Research (March 2011): By 2015, over 750 million users will either have a ticket delivered to their mobile phone or buy a ticket with their phone, compared to 230 million today. Ticket delivery will be by SMS, bar codes, mobile web, smartphone apps or NFC.
• Jupiter Research (April 2011): 500 million people worldwide to use their mobiles as metro and bus tickets by 2015. This is over five times growth from 2010.
• Outside Japan (which uses contactless payments, similar to NFC) systems in operation typically use SMS or bar codes, as are currently used in Stockholm and Prague.
• NFC-based systems will start to take off from 2013.
• Jupiter Research (March 2011): In 2010, airlines issued 160 million mobile boarding passes. By 2013, this will be 480 million or one in seven boarding passes. Today 30 airlines offer mobile boarding passes, half of these also offer mobile ticket booking and purchasing.
9) M-coupons will dominate mobile retail marketing spend until 2013, according to Juniper Research (March 2010):
• Mobile retail will exceed US$12 billion by 2014 (mobile retail is defined as m-coupon redemption values, smart poster fees and advertising expenditure).
• The mobile retail sector would initially be dominated by coupons, but mobile advertising expenditure will exceed coupon redemption values by 2013
- The m-coupon service of McDonald’s Japan is used by 4.5 million users, according to Infinita (March 2010).
- The United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP) (October 2010) plans to use m-vouchers to deliver food aid to 40,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria by the end of 2010.
"Mobile handsets are in an excellent position to become the primary digital channel for providers of banking and related financial services in emerging markets” – Berg Insight.
Part G: Mobile financial services, including m-banking and money transfers
1) Mobile financial services (MFS) (m-banking, m-wallets, remittance/transfers etc) are growing fast:• Yankee Group (June 2011) predicts that there will be 500 million m-banking users globally by 2015.
• Currently, 27 percent of all survey respondents use mobile banking--far more than use m-commerce (13 percent), mobile coupons (11 percent) and mobile payments (9 percent).
• Berg Insight (April 2010) estimates that users of m-banking and related services (including money transfers) doubled between 2008 and 2009 to 55 million and will double again in 2010. In 2015 there will be 894 million users globally. Growth is being driven by efforts by operators and banks in developing countries (particularly in Asia) to bank the unbanked.
• Global Industry Analysts (GIA) (February 2010) predicts the global customer base for m-banking will reach 1.1 billion by the year 2015.
• ABI Research (January 2009) forecasts that in 2013, there will be nearly half a billion customers of MFS, including m-banking, mobile domestic person-to-person payments (i.e. money transfers) and international person-to-person payments.
2) Asia will be the key market for MFS, driven by initiatives to bank the unbanked and money transfers:
• Berg Insight: More than half of global MFS customers will be in Asia Pacific – Middle East and Africa is also expected to be important market – as mobile operators drive initiatives to bank the unbanked.
• GIA: Asia-Pacific will emerge as the predominant MFS market in terms of customer base. In Middle East and Africa, the need to provide financial services to remote areas will be central to the growth of m-banking.
• For more insight into MFS in developing nations, see: The insider's guide to banking the unbanked.
3) In developed nations m-banking will be driven by banks:
• GIA: In North America and Europe, m-banking is extension of online banking, as banks respond to growth of mobile Web. But in Europe, m-banking is in early stages, driven by convenience and value-add rather than revenue generation.
• Berg Insight: Evolving from traditional/online banking; m-banking will attract 115 million users in Europe and 86 million users in North America, by 2015.
• ABI: Banking institutions will be the major promoters of MFS, as it helps to increase customer ‘stickiness,’ help banks cut costs and automate, and most importantly, to reach the unbanked.
• ABI: In the US, Bank of America is a leader of m-banking. Launched in May 2007 it now has 1.5 million subscribers.
4) Remittance/transfers by mobile is growing much faster than m-banking (driven by developing nations)
• ABI Research (July 2009) predicts that 170 million mobile subscribers worldwide will make domestic person-to-person payments (i.e. transfers) in 2011 – that's three times as many as those that will conduct traditional banking functions by mobile. This is driven by the enthusiasm for such services in developing world often from previously ‘unbanked’ people.
• Berg Insight predicts international money transfers will increasingly be done by mobile. By 2015 3–15 percent of transfers handled by agent networks today will be carried out by mobile handset (worth US$1.2–6.2 billion in revenues to the mobile industry).
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