GoMo Mobile Search News

Bango launches analytics service

Rating: Aims to fill gap left by Google
by Tony Dennis

Everyone repeats the industry mantra that advertisers in the mobile space simply can't get useful statistics on how their ads are performing. So Bango has decided to do something about this with its newly launched Analytics service.

Bango's Anil Malhotra claims that the standard web methodology for gathering data – by using browser cookies, simply doesn't translate into the mobile web space.

What Bango Analytics can do is provide a very high level of detail about cellular subscribers who are accessing mobile web pages. Not only does this go down as far as make and model of handset but which network they are connecting via. It can even tell if somebody is on Orange France or Orange UK.

M:Metrics Reports Growth in Mobile Music Adoption

Rating: finally music comes to mobile

M:Metrics reports that music consumption is on the up.

Sideloading accounts for 83 percent of mobile music usage across France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. Among other methods, sharing music outpaces full-track mobile downloading in the majority of these markets.

Mobile Marketing Revenue to Hit $24 Billion in 2013

Rating: advertising supported mobile search?

According to ABI Research mobile marketing is hot in Asia, growing in Europe and getting air in its tyres in the US. Flat rate is the new black, search based ad, video and games will be huge and mobile marketing will grow over USD 24 billion worldwide in 2013 – jumping from USD 1.8 billion in 07.

What we think?

O2's iPhone stats make gripping reading

Rating: EDGE device shows the way for mobile data
by Tony Dennis

Right at the start of the Festive Season, O2's incoming CEO for Europe – Matthew Key – decided it would be a jolly good idea to pass on some very interesting statistics to the FT. Considering the significant picture they painted of data usage by O2's customerbase, you'll forgive me for revisiting them here.

Key revealed that an impressive 60 per cent of the iPhone users O2 has acquired were sending and receiving more than 25 MB of data per month. By comparison less than1.8 per cent of O2's other contract customers did the same.

If you ever wanted evidence of the iPhone's ability to provide easy web surfing and easy access to email, well, here it is. 

Mobile messages to surpass 2 trillion in 2008

Rating: Mobile messaging is hot

As the popularity of mobile messaging services continue to grow, Gartner, Inc. forecasts 2.3 trillion
messages will be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008, a 19.6 percent increase from the 2007 total of 1.9 trillion messages. Mobile messaging revenue across major markets will grow 15.7 percent in 2008
to $60.2 billion, up from $52 billion in 2007.

MEF Live Lunch with Alcatel-Lucent Andrew Brown

Rating: eye opener

By Bena Roberts

I am ashamed to say it that generally when I hear the term Alcatel-Lucent; the immediate perception of “boring” springs to mind. In my earlier days, I sat through many a network infrastructure meeting.

Now in my own business and new role, I felt that I could just avoid the company altogether. That is until Andrew Brown Alcatel-lucent’s mobile application guru sat down next to me for lunch in Hong Kong.

Nokia predicts 25% of entertainment by 2012 will be created within peer communities

Rating: tell me something I don’t know

By Bena Roberts

According to Nokia mobile-mash-ups are the way forward and (from the press release)
of the 9,000 consumers we surveyed:

US leads the way in data spending

Rating: tariffs, tariffs, tariffs

By Annie Turner

Subscribers in North America generate the highest monthly ARPU from mobile data services worldwide, at USD 8.90 in 2Q of this year, according to the September 2007 edition of Informa Telecoms & Media’s World Cellular Data Metrics. Subscribers in Western Europe generate USD7 per month, on average.

Yahoo! oneSearch Answers

Rating: about time

From when I first had an analyst briefing at the Yahoo! offices in London in December 2006 to now; I have felt that Answers needs to be on mobile. Yesterday a blog on the Yahoo! Search Blog site announced that Answers would now be integrated into oneSearch. More over, oneSearch will be rolling out to Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, The Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, the UK, the US and Vietnam.

FACT ME UNTIL I EXPLODE

Rating: More statistics than is possibly interesting...

by Tony Alton

Of the 143 people reading this post between 12:00 and 12:15am 123 have worn a girdle at least once, 34% have a black market organ in their body, a quarter have an illegitimate child from a relationship with a wrestler and 22.34% have both female and male sexual organs.   It may suprise you to hear that these are made up statistics, however thankfully M:Metrics has not made up the numbers in its study of mobile social networking.  The self proclaimed mobile media authority has found out that 12.3m people across the US and Europe have accessed a social network in the last month, the top 3 users being the US, Italy and UK.   Shock horror Myspace and Facebook are the top accessed sites. 

Mobile social networking has 12.3m friends in US and Western Europe

Rating: still a case of Billy No-Mates, relatively speaking

By Annie Turner

M:Metrics has released its first measurement of mobile social networking, announcing that 12.3 million consumers in the US and Western Europe accessed a social networking site by phone in June.

The American audience for mobile social networking sites was the largest, with 7.5m, or 3.5%, of mobile subscribers. Italy follows, with 1.3m or 2.8%, then the UK, with 1.1m or 2.5%, Spain, with 751,000 (2.3%), Germany (1.9%) and France (1.7%). MySpace garnered the most mobile users in the US and UK, whereas MSN was the forum of choice for mobile Web 2.0 users in the other geographies.

Mark Donovan, senior analyst, M:Metrics, comments, “Nearly every online social networking site has added the ability to connect to these communities with a mobile phone, allowing people to access profiles and share content while they’re on the go. With the mobile phone playing a central role in people’s social lives, it’s only natural that social networking sites are working to bridge the gap between the online and mobile worlds.”

MySpace and Facebook are the top two social networking sites accessed via mobile in both the US and UK. MySpace attracts 3.7m US and 440,000 UK mobile users. In America, Facebook’s mobile audience is about 2m and in Britain, about 307,000. Rounding out the top three is YouTube in the US, with 901,000 mobile visitors and Bebo in the UK, with 288,000.

The figures underline the importance of being on-deck: in June, MySpace appeared on the decks of Amp’d, AT&T, Helio and Nextel. Facebook was accessible on the Sprint, AT&T, Virgin and Amp’d (sic) decks and YouTube on the Verizon deck. In the UK in June, Facebook was accessible on T-Mobile and 3, MySpace has distribution on Vodafone and Bebo is on the 3 deck, however the second most popular, MSN Live Spaces, isn’t on any operator on-portal.

Those under 25 are the most active users of mobile social networking sites across all geographies. In France, Germany, Italy and Spain, the age demographic with the largest percentage of use is 13-17-year-olds, whereas college-aged consumers (18-24) are the most avid users in the US and the US.

All in all, mobile social networking is a drop in the bucket right now. In GoMo News’ opinion four things need to happen to accelerate take-up. Firstly flat data rates need to be commonplace. Secondly, faster pipes are needed so that people can upload and download stuff easily. Thirdly instant messaging needs to become prevalent and interoperable. Fourthly users need to be able to switch easily between different modes of communication and different applications without having to shut one down to move to the next; this is a huge inhibitor of constant, habitual use. Operators have got a great chance to differentiate themselves by making mobile social networking simple to do.

Mobile social networking sites to go boom boom long time

Rating: Humankind set to explode all over mobiles

by Tony Alton

Imagine the smell of 600m people all living together in one mobile community.  The rancid whaft of decomposition drifting through the air as millions of unserviced profiles lie rotting in the backwaters of  cyberspace.  Catatonic insomniac users lurch through the hallways desperately trying to find someone attrractive to chat with, and if you believe the tabloids every third person is be a cyber-bully or Internet Nazi out to happy slap you and put it up on Youtube.

Obviously taking a slighly more clinical bent on this dystopic vision Juniper research reckon that the world's mobile communities are set to become more and more packed out, to the point where it becomes a $5.7Bn  market.  Sounds to me like the men with white beards and symetrical clothing have jumped on a bandwagon.  Its got to be a very inexact science trying to predict how a single social network is going to grow, let alone all of the buggers. Give it five years and we will probably have graduated from social networking and will all be using our phones as; That's a very childish way of saying i am dubious of the longeivity of mobile social networking on its own and i think the boffins either plucked a number out of a beard or took the lottery numbers and fed them into this. If there is a smell coming from 600m people living together its the smell of money for the likes of Rupert Murdoch and Vodafone.   

comScore: social networking explodes

Rating: POW!

This is from the comScore press release some great stats on social networking growth globally.

Social networking behemoth MySpace.com attracted more than 114 million global visitors age 15 and older in June 2007, representing a 72-percent increase versus year ago. Facebook.com experienced even stronger growth during that same time frame, jumping 270 percent to 52.2 million visitors. Bebo.com (up 172 percent to 18.2 million visitors) and Tagged.com (up 774 percent to 13.2 million visitors) also increased by orders of magnitude.

Location-based services to grow in Asia-Pacific countries

Rating: mash-up, ads and where’s the nearest noodle bar?

By Annie Turner

Location-based services (LBS), which have largely remained untapped in Asia-Pacific, are expected to grow in tandem with the introduction of mash-up services and increase in mobile advertising.

A new report from Frost & Sullivan* suggests that the market across 13 Asia-Pacific economies was worth USD 291.7m in 2006. The report predict that this will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 15.3% between 2006 and 2009 to reach USD 447m by the end of 2009.

No surprise that Japan and South Korea are by far the most developed LBS markets accounting for nearly 92% of the total revenues in Asia-Pacific. This is largely attributable to the advanced data market in both countries and the existence of a mobile eco-system – a perfect environment for application developers and content providers.

The demand for LBS in the rest of Asia-Pacific has been inhibited by issues including privacy infringement concerns, inter-operability issues, lack of advanced GPS-enabled handsets, and to a large extent, a lack of a conducive eco-system and user interest. In most of these markets, the operators' priority is limited to expanding their subscriber bases and driving greater data traffic by offering basic data services to obtain quicker return-on-investment and appeal to a larger target audience.

"The wider availability of GPS-enabled handsets, value-added mash-up services and intense advertising, the adoption of LBS throughout the rest of Asia-Pacific expects to increase," says Frost & Sullivan industry manager Janice Chong.

Let’s face it, LBS has hardly blazed a trail anywhere and, ironically, will only become mainstream as an integrated part of wider services, as we predicted months ago in the Mobile Advertising and Marketing Analyst (see www.bkimedia.com) and confirmed now by F&S.

* (www.mobileandwireless.frost.com)

Nielsen to track mobile media usage from July

Rating: a virtuous circle

By Annie Turner

Nielsen is to launch the first product under its new Nielsen Wireless brand, Mobile Vector, in the US next month. Mobile Vector will use information from Nielsen’s National People Meter TV sample to segment behaviour and demographics by operator, measure how many people use content services and assess the impact this has on established media behaviour.

The service will complement the Nielsen’s Anytime Anywhere Media Measurement (A2/M2) initiative, which measures TV usage on all TV and video platforms, including personal video devices such as mobile phones. Mobile Vector promises to aid mobile carriers target their advertising campaigns, assist content producers in deciding which distributors to work with, and boost the scope for competitive positioning and differentiation of the mobile media industry more generally.

The group already offers the wireless industry customer segmentation, ringtone sales tracking (Nielsen RingScan), attitudinal and behavioural surveys and mobile polling.

Nielsen says that in the first quarter of 2007, more than 33 million people over the age of 12 used the mobile web and more than 8 million watched a video on their mobile phone (excluding their own, user generated content). Nielsen estimates that at least 25% of 18-34 year olds used their mobile phone to connect to the Internet in the first quarter of 2007, but that 46% of the mobile video audience is aged 35 plus and 46% is female.

Good. The more reliable the metrics, the more likely advertisers are to put their hands in their pockets and shoulder some of the cost, which means more people will use it, which means Nielsen will have more to report…I think it’s called a virtuous circle.

German survey looks at attitudes to mobile advertising and marketing

Rating: no **** Sherlock

By Annie Turner

The German Internet Economy Organisation (ECO) has published third part of its results of a survey of German consumers’ attitudes towards mobile marketing and advertising. There are no surprises.

The survey asked specialists in the telecoms, Internet and TV industries what they felt about the acceptance of German consumers of mobile advertising. Some 63% believe that in 2007 and 2008 there will be change in attitude and that consumers will be more willing to accept advertising on their hand sets. Only 31 % think that this will definitely not be the case. Hard to say what they do in their spare time.

The participants were also asked which areas of mobile advertisement they thought would be most successful. The answers were surprisingly old-fashioned: at the top of the list came banners and sponsored links came out top with 28%. Video and music downloads came a poor second with 13% while in-game advertising got the vote of just 7% and product placement in video clips were seen by only 6% as having a role to play anytime soon.

This could be for any one of three reasons. The participants are more realistic than those of us who are up to our necks in the mobile advertising and marketing, and who have a tendency to look forward rather than at where we are now. Secondly, which I favour, the experts (that is someone who knows a lot about very little) totally underestimate the savvy of mobile consumers. Or thirdly, the survey would have been more convincing if they’d asked the consumers.

Dr Bettina Horster of ECO reckons it takes two to three years for consumers to become accustomed to new forms of marketing and expects much to change over that time. In particular, she says that better responses results are being achieved already through cross-marketing methods, which consumers tend to view as interesting offers, not advertising. For example, a mobile user downloads a piece of music to their phone and when the download is completed, they are offered tickets for the next concert.

Holy smoke, joined up marketing. What will they think of next?

Mobile TV ad metrics begin

Rating: tough job, but someone has to do it

By Annie Turner

Rentrak has entered into an agreement with Hiwire to conduct a joint measurement trial of mobile TV viewing by consumers in Las Vegas. Hiwire specialises in delivery of mobile TV entertainment and is a subsidiary of Aloha Partners, the largest owner of 700MHz spectrum in the US.

During the trial, Rentrak will anonymously monitor mobile TV viewing data from Hiwire to provide a web-based statistical reporting service. In effect, it will serve as Hiwire¹s primary data analytics and third-party verification provider, delivering audience viewing metrics, such as the total number of viewers, of video and video advertising watched on mobile phones. The joint trial will begin this summer.

Mobile TV is very new and there is a lot of contradictory information about viewing habits and preferences floating about in the market. The only way that mobile TV will become an ad-funded or supported channel is if reliable, accurate metrics are available. All parties need to remember that this is NOT bog standard TV on a smaller screen and therefore the metrics used for TV will only be applicable in part and that entirely new modes of behaviour are of most interest. In other words, in this emerging market, it's important to be measuring the right things.

For more information see http://www.rentrak.com/mc_press_release?file=052307

M:Metrics predicts advertising is ready to rock in Europe

Rating: not without lower data charges it ain’t

By Annie Turner

In support of the GSM Association’s advertising standardisation programme (see below) M:Metrics has just published figures about the number of subscribers who currently access news and information services via their mobile phones. The mobile authority reckons they provide a clear indication of the potential market for mobile advertising across Europe.

"The moment for mobile advertising standards has absolutely arrived," says Evan Neufeld, vice president and senior analyst, M:Metrics. "Our data shows that consumers from the most sought-after demographics are incorporating the mobile web into the fabric of their daily lives. The mobile medium allows advertisers to extend the reach of the Internet in a highly personal, relevant manner that other media can't."

FR DE IT ES UK US
Total Mobile Subscribers (Aged 13+) in millions 44.5 46.0 44.0 32.0 44.5 207.0

% of mobile subscribers who accessed news/info (via browser, sms or downloaded application) 11.3% 8.0% 20.1% 9.0% 17.2% 12.6%
% of active users who access news/info (via browser, sms or downloaded application) 37.2% 37.5% 61.7% 44.4% 44.8% 52.4%
% of total mobile subscribers who have a mobile phone with a web browser 88.1% 89.8% 86.0% 93.8% 89.5% 87.9%

+ Popular Mobile content mirrors popular web content – immediate, necessary and on-the-go (key categories include Weather, Sports, News, Maps, Search)

Well, we’ve got slightly mixed feelings here about the GSMA’s initiative because it appears to be duplicating work already carried out some considerable time ago by the American-based Mobile Marketing Association (MMA). Anyway, it’s not the GSMA or the MMA’s efforts that will propel the heavier use of information services in Europe, which is lagging behind the US, but sensible, affordable, flat rate data tariffs. Vodafone has promised the launch of such in the UK in early summer – it will be interesting to see how that pulls the others into line and affects mobile web use.

comScore says podcasts dominated by men

Rating: interesting

ComSore has found that podcasts are dominated by men and males between the ages of 18-24 are more likely to downloqe podcasts via iTunews. Podcasting is also popular amoung 35-54 year olds in high income better educated consumer segments.
The study was also sponsored by mobile advertising enable Ad Infuse – no doubt to help it target audio podcast advertisements.

Young Hispanics are ripe for mobile advertising

Rating: what are you waiting for?

By Annie Turner

M:Metrics reports that with 70.9% of English-speaking Hispanics consuming mobile content in the US, they are among the most active, engaged mobile content consumers. The measurement firm finds that the percentage of English-speaking Hispanics who consume media and information far surpasses the market average of 47.9%.

Age has a lot to do with it. More than 51.5% of the total Hispanic mobile population falls into the 18-34 age group whereas the 18-34 age group only accounts for 31% of the entire US mobile population. Already the likes of McDonald's, Coca Cola, Ikea, Univision and Comedy Central have taking advantage of mobile advertising to reach these people.

The percentages of Hispanic mobile subscribers who watched mobile video or listened to music side loaded from their PC are more than double the industry average. They are also similarly more inclined to access news and information via mobile browser, at 18.8% compared to 9.6% of all subscribers.

Some 35% of this demographic play mobile games in March, compared to 21% of the market on average. This pattern of above average usage of mobile content is present in almost all activities, from ringtones to photo messaging and trading videos.

Fantastic that such a high number of younger Hispanic people are so tech savvy and are being courted by the big brands via mobile. They can safely expect a lot more attention from the big brands in the coming months.

icrossing says consumers stick with big search engine brands

Rating: do they?

iCrossing has found in a new study that 30% of mobile users access the Internet on the mobile devices.
75% of these do not conduct search; those that do prefer Google, Yahoo! MSN and Ask.

What we think?
Is this true? This study raises more questions than it answers as it’s unable to distinguish between discovery and mobile search. Mobile search is necessary when users can’t find what they want. Many operator mobile portals are designed as lists of “best of, most viewed, most downloaded or top 10” which balances out the need to search. Off portal it’s a different story. The search box plays a more prominent role. The standard search box is used to conduct the search. This search box might be run by a Google or Yahoo! and users are familiar with brand names – but we are not convinced they “prefer” to use the branded engine. We believe that by default branded players have more traction in the off-portal space and simply more presence.

This will and is already changing. BKI Media is an industry analyst company so its speciality is not conducting research or gathering data – but the mobile search market place is its speciality. BKI Media believes that the search engine experience can include search results from Google or Yahoo! but in the future white label search engines run by the operators will be the face of mobile search.

Alltel’s own search button “powered by JumpTap” on new mobile devices is an example of this. For more information please see BKI Media.

SFR has 140,000 mobile TV users, launches Canal Plus

Rating: and another one

By Annie Turner

These days you can't turn round without catching your shin on yet another
mobile TV offering. SFR says it has nearly 140,000 mobile TV users at the
end of March, up from 70,000 at the end of December. Now French mobile
operator SFR and pay TV group Canal Plus have launched Canal Plus Chaine
Mobile, a mobile phone TV channel that can be accessed any time via the
Vodafone live! portal.

It's not that I dispute any particular organisation's claims about the
number of viewers it has, it's just that the situation reminds me of the
situation with Christ's cross in the Middle Ages, that is, had one stuck all
the splinters together that were claimed to be from that original cross, you
could have built a galleon with them. If you add all the people together who
are supposedly hooked on mobile TV, you'd probably find it amounted to
multiples of the world's population.

Anyhow, the new Canal channel offers whole episodes of Canal Plus'
programmes, such as Les Guinols de l'info, le Grand Journal and Salut les
Terriens. Canal Plus Chaine Mobile also includes made-for-mobile
programming, including sports news, league tables and football goals.

Subscribers with a 3G/3G+ handset go online at Vodafone live! to subscribe.
The service costs EUR 5 per month, with the first month free. The service
also offers Canal Plus VOD, ringtones and pictures and the Canal Plus Le
Bouquet programme guide.

Mind the splinters.

Ericsson heralds personalised TV ads trial a triumph

Rating: I'm the best... no.. I'm the best, NO Me..

By Annie Turner

Ericsson and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) are claiming that the world's first personalised mobile TV advertising has proved a great success.

This is what they say:

The results of the three-month trial, which have been processed by M:Metrics, show that the average click-through rate reached 13%, and the average viewing time of each mobile TV user more than doubled – to seven minutes per session – when users interacted with customised ads.

The trial also showed this behavior was sustainable in terms of the click-through rate and session times because usage was consistent throughout the trial. Almost half of the users were 30 to 44 years old, followed by those 18 to 29 years old. Participants identified entertainment and music as their most common interests when starting in the trial.

Advertisements in the trial were interactive, customised to ensure their relevance to individual users, and tailored to the user's age, gender, location, and personal interests. Advertising content also spanned an array of formats, including videos, banners, ticker texts, and branded downloadable content.

Paul Goode, Vice President at M:Metrics, says: "Previous research from M:Metrics has shown that pricing is a major deterrent to the adoption of mobile TV, and that up to 41% of mobile TV consumers would accept advertising-subsidised services. The results of this trial confirm the willingness of viewers to embrace advertising. This is excellent news for the growth potential of mobile TV audiences."

What we think?

And so say all of us – but one of the main inhibitors to the take-up of mobile TV generally are the high and confusing data tariffs in Europe. However, we are shortly going to see the introduction of flat-rate tariffs, finally, here which should have a profound effect on take-up. As for ‘embracing ads’, it remains to be seen how accepting consumers will be in the longer term, as the novelty of mobile TV and other multimedia services wears off and they become and integral part of everyday life.

More news on this here.

US data usage soars, right?

Rating: not too good to question

By Annie Turner

According to Steve Largent, President of CTIA last year the US mobile data market was worth USD15.2bn, up 77% on 2005. Also, mobile users now amount to 225 million.

On the data front, as this presumably includes SMS (it invariably does) it disguises the poor take-up of what we mean by data services - ie using the Internet via mobile for communication, discovery, purchases etc.
This is even though there are lots of bucket rate data tariffs in the US.

Cingular's Chris Black recently talked with passion about increasing the uptake of SMS, even the notion of holding town meetings to teach adults the joys of text. Right after that Cingular, Verizon and Sprint put up the [already high] price of SMS - don't forget in the that sender AND receivers pay. Funny way of going about it, right.

We predict an explosion in IM via mobile browsers - without anyone holding town meetings to show kids how to do it.

M:Metrics launches MeterDirect

Rating: beam me up Scottie! I found MeterDirect>

It sounds like something out of Star Trek, but it isn’t. m:metrics is now offers a service that measures mobile media behaviour?

Apparently the new service is able to track the demographic composition of the mobile web and identify pattern from users. Basically who reads or views what and when. The first figures are below and its interesting that even with free browsing Vodafone doesn’t appear in the top 5 UK mobile sites.

From the press release:
In both geographies, Google ranks as the most popular mobile Web site, the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daypart has the largest audience of mobile Web users, and mobile media consumers spend more than eight minutes per session accessing the mobile Web, a surprisingly high figure. However, while mobile operator sites are most popular among British consumers, Americans prefer Yahoo! and Microsoft properties.

Top Mobile Web Domains: February 2007
United States United Kingdom
Domain Company Domain Company
google.comGoogle Inc.google.co.ukGoogle Inc.
yahoo.com Yahoo! Inc.o2.co.uk O2 (UK) Ltd
msn.com Microsoft orange.co.ukOrange Personal Communications Services Limited
live.com Microsoft bbc.co.uk British Broadcasting Corporation
go.com The Walt Disney three.co.ukHutchison 3G UK Limited

Source: M:Metrics. Reports for the month of February are projected to represent the universe of Smartphone owners and are based on in-tab panel sizes of approximately 500 panelists in the United States and 600 panelists in the United Kingdom. UK google.com includes the google.co.uk domain.

MeterDirect also provides insights into daily audience for more than 5,000 mobile Web domains. Friday is the most active day for mobile Web use among Americans, with more than half of all smartphone owners using their mobile Web browser, while in the United Kingdom, Tuesdays account for the highest level of traffic. The data also reflects that contrary to popular belief, usage of mobile Web browsing is higher in the United States which consistently shows a higher level of daily usage than among British smartphone users.
Reach by Day of the Week: February 2007
Day United States United Kingdom
Sunday 41.32% 33.69%
Monday 42.44% 39.64%
Tuesday 45.67% 47.14%
Wednesday49.67% 43.22%
Thursday 48.54% 39.27%
Friday 50.98% 36.23%
Saturday 47.16% 34.82%
Source: M:Metrics. Reports for the month of February are based on a in-tab sample sizes of approximately 500 panelists in the United States and 600 panelists in the United Kingdom.

Should be music to operators’ ears

Rating: try listening

By Annie Turner

M:Metrics has just published figures on the mobile music market for the first time – reflecting this sector’s growing importance.

This is what it found: “ownership of musicphones (defined as phones that are capable of music storage and playback) is growing rapidly across the United States and Western Europe. The UK boasts the highest penetration of these devices, at 40 percent, followed by Germany (34%), Italy (32%), Spain (29%) and France (23%). While the US lags these markets, with only 17% (33 million) of mobile subscribers owning a musicphone, it has shown impressive growth in the past year: a 385% increase from January 2006 to January 2007.

So, at the risk of stating the obvious, it looks like audio is becoming the killer mobile app. However, operators are missing a highly lucrative trick – mobile podcasts.

While innovative companies in the US, such as UpSnap and Mobilcast, are charging per minute to listen to podcasts on the hoof, delivering them through those old faithfuls SMS as the payment mechanism and either phone calls or voicemail as the delivery means, operators haven’t got a clue.

In the UK 3 includes podcasts in its X-Series offering, but delivers them by streaming, as a data service. Why? This is unnecessarily complicated and prone to all sorts of problems, while operator dorks elsewhere are charging on a subscription basis when people would pay for what they want as they go.

Has there ever been an industry that is so good at screwing up viable revenue streams as mobile. You show it a way to please customers and make money, it does something else. All suggestions gratefully received – a bottle of champagne to the one we like best.

An anlysis of 3 X-Series podcasts, MSN and Yahoo! Go is in next months issue of The Mobile Search Analyst.

Mobile Statistics: Mobile Enablement Platform Content Market to Grow to $7.4 Billion by 2011

Rating: stats in full isuppli

More stats on the mobile entertainment market on GoMo News.

Driven by a seemingly insatiable consumer appetite for personalization and entertainment content on wireless handsets, companies that provide the platforms that deliver premium content to mobile phones reaped a $4.2 billion share of the $16.3 billion mobile premium content market in 2006, according to iSuppli Corp. These mobile-content-enablement platform companies perform the tasks involving the ingesting, cataloging, storing and delivering of content and handling all of the corresponding financial transactions.

“Bringing content to a handset is a very complex and fragmented process with an assortment of partners and ever-changing proportions of on-deck and off-portal transactions. In some instances, players in the value chain will be partners and in some instances, they will be competitors,” said Frank Dickson, principal analyst for multimedia content, services and infrastructure with iSuppli.

“However, we will see a more simplified ecosystem in the future as companies such as Amdocs, Nokia, Real Networks and Sybase have led a wave of acquisitions in the space that measures in the billions of dollars. Furthermore, the acquisition wave seems to be intensifying.”

Recent research by iSuppli found the following:

Images, which were the number-one mobile content product consumed in 2006, will fall to fourth place in 2011. Over-the-air full music track downloads, mobile games, streaming and VOD video and ringtunes are destined to become the dominant mobile-content categories.
By 2011, the content providers’ share of the premium mobile content market will exceed $19 billion, with the nearly half of that total accounted for by the music categories.
The operators’ share of premium content revenues in Asia will exceed $3 billion in 2009.

New mobile statistics

Rating: just mobile statistics, man

We promised via our involvement in momo London to publish all the mobile stats and we have been very bad at it! Here are two of the latest studies from Harris Interactive and Portio Research.
Many of you ask if BKI Media offers statistics and the answer is no. We only did one research study for a client on the value of mobile search in 2011. Bena Roberts was an analyst in 1995 at Romtec UK (now GFK) and has experience of trend analysis -but our core focus is industry analysis. We do rely on these companies as well as M:Metrics for hot new stats that we can use to assist our industry analysis or edgy wireless new.

Harris Interactive Mobile AdvertisingIncentive-based advertisements
According to the study, a surprising 35 percent of adult cell phone
users are willing to accept incentive-based advertisements. Of these
adults, 78 percent say the best incentive would be cold hard cash, followed
by free minutes (63%), free entertainment downloads (e.g. ring tones,
games; 40%) and discount coupons (40%).
Preferred method of delivery
The survey further reveals that over half (56%) of those who are at
least somewhat interested in receiving ads on their cell phone say they
would prefer to receive them via text message, while 40 percent would like
to receive them as a picture message. Less than one-quarter of adults would
choose to receive them as videos (24%), while others would have them
transferred automatically to email (23%), as a voice message (22%) or
something else (7%).
Privacy and control matter
Just under three-quarters (70%) of respondents who are at least
somewhat interested in receiving mobile advertising are also willing to
provide information about themselves to their cell phone provider in
exchange for an ability to customize the service to their needs. Among
them, 30 percent are willing to receive the ads for the right incentive,
while 20 percent would receive them if they have control to turn them on or
off and 20 percent are willing to receive the ads if they can choose who
the information is sent to.
Incentives
Adult mobile phone users who are at least somewhat interested in mobile
advertising also feel that the following could lower the pain associated
with watching these ads:
-- The ability to opt out (66%);
-- Choosing the type of ads to be received (56%);
-- Choosing the number of ads to be received in a given period of time
(48%);
-- Providing a profile of desired areas of interest so only specific ads
are sent (43%);
-- Different/discounted plan if ads included (42%);
-- Choosing specific times when ads would be received (40%).
These data were presented by Joe Porus and Judy Ricker at the Mobile
Advertising and Marketing USA Conference held on March 6 and 7 in New York
City. To view the presentation, go to
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/services/pubs/HI_TECH_MCR_PPT_Mobile_Adver

Portio Research on Mobile Gaming highlights:
About this market study

Following six years of decline from a high of USD$39.7 billion in 2000 to just USD$32.1 billion in 2006, we believe that the value of the global music market is set to reverse and grow again back to USD$38.8 by 2011. In 2006 the major mobile handset manufacturers (Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, LG and others) have been shipping MP3 enabled handsets in some volumes. At the same time, many mobile network operators (MNOs) have started to distribute MP3 enabled phones and launch OTA (over-the-air) music download services (Vodafone, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, Cingular, DoCoMo, SKT, O2, Orange and many more) thus creating a new digital music consumption market.

Worldwide, the mobile services market dwarfs the music industry in revenue terms, and music companies need to be taking a very, very serious look at mobile operators as they may possibly become one of the future's biggest channels to market.

In the portable digital music device market, Apple has continued to produce new models of its highly successful iPod, and while the iPod leads the market, alternative MP3 players have continued to proliferate world wide. In November 2006, Microsoft launched its rival digital music player – Zune. Sales so far have not been outstanding, but this signifies a major move by a very major player, and this has brought further interest to the digital music player market. We expect to see in excess of 1 billion mobile handsets shipped worldwide in 2007, and almost half of these will be MP3-enabled. With so many devices shipping out to consumers the MP3 player market will soon be totally dominated by the mobile handset vendors.

Worldwide SMS revenues to hit USD67bn by 2012

Rating: lower prices, growing market

By Annie Turner

A new report from Portio Research forecasts a healthy future for SMS. Although the growth of SMS revenues will not be as aggressive as the growth of SMS volumes due to declining prices, by 2012 global SMS revenues are expected to reach USD 67bn, driven by 3.7 trillion messages.

The report, Mobile Messaging Futures 2007 - 2012 outlines an exciting future for other mobile messaging technologies especially instant messaging and mobile e-mail amid continued strong worldwide subscriber growth.

Markets have continued to grow and greatly exceeded the predictions of similar research carried out in 2005. SMS traffic has not flattened out in mature markets, but continued to boom, while the US market has grown much faster than expected. The SMS market continues to be fuelled by new subscribers, despite declining prices.

In Asia alone in every subsequent five minute period for the next six years, 2,267 people will have bought their first ever mobile phone. For most, these new handsets will offer little affordable functionality apart from basic voice and SMS services. This translates into an additional 1.4bn new mobile subscribers in Asia alone with a consequent boom in SMS traffic in the region.

By 2011, the report predicts, mobile instant messaging (MIM), especially in markets such as North America, will supplant SMS as the mainstream messaging service as smartphones and wireless Internet proliferate. Operators, the report suggests, need to strike a balance between SMS and IM pricing to prevent the cannibalisation of SMS revenues in the future.

All of which is pretty amazingly when you consider what a royal pain texting is and how much it costs if you work it out per megabyte. SMS will fade in developed markets, although a significant price differential between it and IM and email might stem the tide for a while. As ever, operators need to be careful that they don’t strangle a new revenue stream because they can’t bear to let go of an old model, regardless of what consumers want. We’re not overly optimistic that they’ll change their spots.

For further information see: www.portioresearch.com

Orange launches Pikeo new community Internet and mobile site

Rating: Peek a boo Flikr mobile alternative

Only days after Yahoo! makes its Flickr service mobile on the all new Go!, Orange launches its pikeo community site where users can discover and share photos. The service is free and from January 15, 2007 Yann Arthus-Bertrand will be exhibiting photos from his Agenda Utile diary.

Pikeo is available in French, English and Spanish. It also includes Microsoft’s Virtual Earth cartography service so that users can enrich a map of the world with their own photos… just as the Yahoo! Flickr service.

Discovery of photos is encouraged with a Tag search service and ShoZu provides the interface that allows mobile photos to get sent directly to the Pikeo virtual space.

The Pikeo site has a user-friendly interface based on Adobe Flex technology:
• the user interface is displayed on the screen without a scroll bar
• users choose the information they wish to keep on the screen via mini-windows
• most of the features can be accessed in one or two clicks and elements can be moved easily by means of the `drag and drop' system.
User interface is crucial to the success of mobile picture communities. The inclusion of the Adobe Flex technology is an asset to the service and will make sure that uptake is driven by ease of use.

Mobile Statistics

As promised on momo London - here is a section for mobile statistics.
Many thanks to Paul Goode from M:Metrics for getting the ball rolling

Download mmetrics_mma_workshop_6th_dec_v2.ppt

>

Download nov_6th_7th_web_briefing_v3.ppt

Worldwide mobile phone sales grew 21.5% last quarter

Rating: life is tough

By Louise Wells

A Gartner report published today says mobile phone sales totalled 251 million units in the third quarter of 2006, a 21.5% increase on the same period last year. Asia/Pacific was the fastest growing region this quarter; India and China in particular rose dramatically and drove overall growth.

As a result of the strong quarter, Gartner raised its mobile phone sales forecast to reach 986 million units in 2006,with 281 million units in the fourth quarter of 2006.

“Although sales of replacement handsets during the third quarter, in the more mature markets were not as buoyant as we have been accustomed to they were offset by continuing momentum in sales to first-time buyers in emerging markets,” says Carolina Milanesi, principal analyst for mobile terminals research at Gartner, based in the UK. “We have also started to see increasing sales of replacement models in some emerging market, which helped push up total sales in the third quarter.”

Ms Milanesi added, “In a market where players compete on price, technology and strategic partnerships, it is impossible to believe that life is not getting much tougher for the smaller vendors. Nokia, Motorola and Samsung accounted for 68% of worldwide mobile sales in the third quarter of 2006.”

Nokia retained its worldwide number one position with 35.1% market share; gaining 2.6% compared to the same period last year, Indeed, Nokia increased its market share in all regions expect North America, and also regained the top spot in Latin America after losing it to Motorola a year ago.

While Motorola increased its worldwide market share in the third quarter of 2006, the company experienced challenges in some regions. It lost the top spot in Latin American and its number two position in Western Europe and in the Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa region. The Krzr is struggling to enjoy the same reception that greeted the Razr, and the Motofone may not be available until 2007. Christmas might not be so jolly for Motorola in some markets.

After a shaky first half of the year, Samsung recorded a healthy third quarter with sales accounting for more than 30 million units. Thanks to products such as the D900 and E900, Samsung was able to regain second place in the markets in Western Europe, and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “Samsung has won consumers back thanks to finding a more personal approach to design and features and by embracing the trend for slim devices,” Ms Milanesi says.

“Sony Ericsson had an exceptional quarter selling 19.4 million units in the third quarter of 2006 and gaining 1% year-on-year,” Ms Milanesi adds. “The company’s success was a result of building a wider portfolio of successful products rather than counting on a single product. It also focused on better planning to avoid the supply problems that have limited its potential in the past.”

The success of LG’s KG800 Chocolate started to melt away this quarter, leaving the manufacturer further behind Sony Ericsson in the worldwide ranking. LG needs to expand its portfolio quickly to move up from fifth place.

BenQ declared that it was stopping payments to its German subsidiary, BenQ Mobile, at the end of September 2006, barely a year after its formation from Siemens' handset business. BenQ Mobile in Germany has filed for insolvency. In the three months before, it recorded sales of slightly more than 6 million units.

So the pie gets ever bigger, but unless you’re Nokia it seems, getting a share gets harder all the time.

See http://www.gartner.com/media_relations/asset_61507_1575.jsp for more info.