US Web-Enabled Mobiles and Increased Smartphones in South Korea

eMarketer is pointing to an increasing mobile web population. Paul Budde talks of an increase in South Korean smartphones. I see more and more people using the mobile web each day around inner city Sydney. We’re on the edge of something that has been brewing for a few years in mobile. Very exciting.

From the eMarketer report today:

According to Nielsen, smartphones were used by 25% of the US mobile phone audience in Q2 2010, up from 23% the previous quarter and 16% in Q2 2009. The research firm predicts they will overtake feature phones by the end of 2011.

This increased ownership of smart devices is driving growth in mobile internet usage. The acceleration of this trend has led eMarketer to raise its forecast relative to the estimates released in November 2009. According to eMarketer projections, 85.5 million mobile users will access the web from their mobile devices in 2010, versus 83.5 million in the previous forecast.

Paul Budde on South Korea:

Up until 2007 South Koreans continued to shun mobile phones with PC-like functionality, unlike in the US and European markets where such devices were becoming increasingly popular. At that time there were only 10 smartphone models in South Korea, compared to the hundreds of phone models being introduced within the country on a regular basis. Some customers were turning away from smartphones because they were bulky, expensive and also had limited Internet connectivity.

Into 2010 a shift was underway in South Korean consumer’s perception of smartphones, perhaps enticed by the applications offered through the iPhone. South Korean manufacturers ramped up their production of smartphones to account for around 50% of all production.

Mobile Browsing Prime Time Is 8pm To Midnight

Opera’s state of the mobile web report has been released for May 2010.

One of the findings that struck me the most is:

It turns out that the prime time for mobile browsing in every country was at night, from 8 p.m. to midnight. This holds true for all the countries in the top 10, with the real variation coming at other times of the day.

My guess at why this is the case would be entirely based on what I do. I sit down at night and flick through my Google Reader feeds or other sites. I don’t really get the chance to do this during the day. Whilst I don’t think the majority of the mobile internet population is flicking through Google Reader, I imagine they still just want to flick through the internet and at night is when they get the time to.

Google Buys AdMob: Mobile Advertising Is Different

Google’s acqusition of AdMob gives the channel recognition and in mobile marketer’s mind shows that mobile is different to the Internet.

I got a nice little email from Omar Hamoui of AdMob this morning confirming that they had been acquired by Google and reassuring current customers.

Google’s acquisition of AdMob will serve to help the mobile advertising industry in general by giving the channel mainstream recognition.  James Briggs, the CEO Briabe Media, says “from an industry perspective, this deal will force a lot of other folks to take a really close look at the mobile marketing industry to better understand the impact that it is about to have on the broader advertising industry.” This is a huge vote of support for mobile advertising that should hopefully pike the interests and convince those that haven’t given mobile much attention.

“Google validated what many companies to include Millennial have thought for years – that mobile is a different market with a huge potential for advertising” says Paul Palmieri, CEO of Millenial Media.

You can read some more great opinions on the mobiThinking blog.

Australian Mobile Internet Statistics Links

This morning I decided I needed to brush up on my Australian Mobile Internet Statistics. It doesn’t look like too much is new since my last post. Anyway here are some of the links I went through (they are by no means comprehensive):

• Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index from AIMIA in September. Summarised by SMH.
• Mobile Traffic Trends, again from AIMIA, which is nicely summarised by Switched On Media.
• 40 Mind Blowing Australian Digital Statistics has a few mobile stats.

Mobile Internet To Spur Carriers To Acquire

Mobile carriers are predicted to start acquiring more and more mobile internet services. With the rise in mobile internet and phones like the iPhone breaking down those wall gardens this seems a smart move, on the carriers part, so the carriers can maintain their end to end service for the customer.

An article from mocoNews got me thinking about this:

A bigger role for telecoms: The rise of the mobile internet will also spur carriers to buy up services. Case in point: AT&T’s 2008 purchase of Wi-Fi operator Wayport is seen as a way for manage the flow of content and expand their relationships with other companies. For example the Wayport deal expanded the carrier’s Wi-Fi network to nearly 20,000 hotspots in the U.S. by adding locations at some Marriott Vacation Club and Four Seasons hotels as well as McDonald’s restaurants.“In the wired Internet, the carrier was a dumb pipe,” Jefferies & Co.‘s Robert Jackman told Reuters. “In mobile Internet, carriers will play a bigger role. If you can’t control end-to-end through to the billing relationship, you can’t control the end-customer.”

Mobile Internet Advertising Is The Future

A recent whitepaper from Juniper Research shows that the future of mobile advertising is in mobile internet advertising.

Mobile internet advertising is expected to dominate all other forms of mobile advertising by the year 2014. Other channels of note in the future are personal messaging (person-to-person SMS for advertising) and idle-screen advertising.

You can read more about the report over at MobiAD or you can purchase the report from Juniper.

Australian Mobile Internet Statistics

BuzzCity has just launched a mobile advertising campaign planner. The campaign planner gives you access to some high level mobile internet statistics for countries around the world. There are some important take-aways from a quick skim over the data:

The iPhone is only one handset in a portfolio of handsets

The first statistic that really stands out is that iPhone users make up less than 1% of the mobile internet market in Australia. Therefore less than 200,000 Australian’s own an iPhone, given that almost 100% of the 20+ million Australians and some percentage less than that would actually use the mobile internet. What does this mean? It means that the iPhone should only form part of your mobile offering, along with all the other available handsets.

XHTML services have viability

BuzzCity says 22% of mobiles accessing the internet have an XHTML browser feature. This would imply about 4.4 million handsets with the ability to checkout standard XHTML websites.

XHTML browsing may only make up 22% of handsets accessing the internet but if you combine this with figures indicating that iPhone users consume much more data than other users then you could assume that XHTML mobile users consume more than non-XHTML mobile users. This might be because those users are more savvy, have better phones, or just have a better browsing experience because of richer data or a richer browser.

So, it would now seem viable to develop straight XHTML services to suit your mobile users which will make development easier.

Further Information

Where it starts to get interesting is mixing this data up and being able to drill down from all different angles at once. Unfortunately, the statistics BuzzCity provides are just broad at the stage, but they do serve as a great starting point for mobile internet usage. Something that needs to be done is to verify these statistics against statistics from others.

Share this Post