THE PERCEPTION OF HIGH COSTS CONTINUES TO HOLD BACK MOBILE DATA USAGE, says a new survey from 3ple-Media. Last year, just 32 percent of mobile subscribers surveyed said that the believed receiving multimedia content on their mobile would be “too expensive”, but that figure jumped to 58 percent this year. Meanwhile, 65 percent of operators surveyed agreed that cost was the biggest obstacle to users getting multimedia content. Source

The bottom line: While flat-rate data plans have become more pervasive, and mobile data use has increased, cost still remains a very sticky subject, particularly for content not covered under unlimited data plans. This is a huge issue for operators and content providers looking to increase uptake of mobile content, but the implication is pretty clear: consumers don’t have good pricing information, and they’re hesitant to shell out without it.

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THERE’S A MIDDLE CLASS OF IPHONE APP DEVELOPERS, says mobile apps analytics company Flurry, with them bigger than independent developers, but much smaller than the traditional mobile powerhouses. The company studied the distribution of the most popular games on US carrier decks and in the Apple App Store, and found that the iPhone environment wasn’t dominated by the same big names (EA, Gameloft, Namco, etc.), but rather by smaller, newer developers.

Flurry says the cost of content is a big issue: it notes that in the App Store, EA’s games mostly run from $5 to $10, compared to the $1 to $2 of other more popular games. It also notes that just before it conducted its analysis, Gameloft sliced the cost of its iPhone games to 99 cents; consequently 3 of its games leapt into the top 25 list. Source

The bottom line: Once again, these figures show how price-sensitive consumers are when it comes to mobile content. The question for the likes of EA, though, falls back to that wonderful economic concept of price elasticity: by cutting the price of a $5 game to $1, will they get 5 times as many buyers? It’s hard to get a read on that from Flurry’s data, but anecdotally, it seems that users have a much easier time paying the mental transaction cost of a 99-cent app, and the lower price tempts a lot more curious buyers.

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SIXTY-TWO PERCENT OF MOBILE VIDEO USERS SPEND MORE TIME ON THE MOBILE INTERNET than they do surfing the internet on their PCs, according to a survey from mobile video delivery company Transpera, compared to just 9 percent of people who don’t watch mobile video. There’s a wide gap in other usage stats between users and non-users of mobile video, making it clear that those who do use it are heavy mobile users in general.

There’s also some good info for potential mobile video advertisers: the company found that mobile video users eat out more, travel more and tend to earn more money than non-users. Of course, if these users are out of their home or traveling more often, and cost isn’t a concern, they might be expected to use mobile services more heavily. Source

The bottom line: Clearly people using mobile video are early adopters and heavy users of mobile data services. This is great and makes them a good target for advertisers, on one hand, but on the other, expresses that use of mobile video is still far from mainstream.

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THE MOBILE WEB ISN’T JUST LIMITED TO SMARTPHONES, browser behemoth Opera says. In its latest State of the Mobile Web report, the company says served over 10.4 billion pages to the 26.5 million users of its Opera Mini browser in June, up 8 percent over May. It reports the top ten countries for Opera Mini use in the month were Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, U.S., U.K., Poland and Nigeria, with India overtaking China last month. Source

The bottom line: Opera Mini remains a popular way for feature phone users to get online, and coupled with the use of operator-provided transcoding services, as well as good old carrier decks, remind us that browsing the mobile web isn’t limited to the likes of the iPhone and other high-end devices. Users of simpler devices remain a huge and viable audience for mobile content providers and advertisers.

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MOBILE DATA PLANS ARE ONE OF THE FIRST THINGS CONSUMERS LOOK TO CUT when they hit budget problems, says research from Strategy Analytics. It found that almost half of Americans surveyed said they’d drop mobile data completely if they needed to cut household costs, a far greater percentage than mobile voice, fixed voice, digital TV or broadband internet.

The bottom line: While mobile data use grows, it’s still viewed largely as a luxury item, rather than a necessity. Just 10 percent of people said they’d drop their fixed broadband completely, showing just how important it has become to people – meaning mobile data has a long way to go.

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TEXT, VOICE, THEN MOBILE WEB are the most common features used daily by UK mobile subscribers, says Lightspeed Research. But the gap between text and voice, and mobile web remains pretty huge: About half of those surveyed send a text every day, while a little more than a third make a call each day; but just 9 percent use the mobile web every day. Source

The bottom line: While mobile web use continues to grow, as we’ve seen from multiple data points today, there’s still a lot of room for growth and several obstacles remain. For advertisers, a bigger audience would be beneficial, so what can be done to help to grow that audience? There’s the Blyk model (documented in Peggy’s in-depth analysis), which looks to offer free service to users in exchange for ads, but perhaps other sponsorship opportunities exist. Vodafone’s “free internet days” have generated a lot of interest and usage, and these sorts of offers could represent a sponsorship opportunity.

Tags: 3ple-Media, Blyk, EA, Flurry, Gameloft, iPhone, Lightspeed Research, Mobile Advertising, mobile analytics, Mobile Internet, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Video, Namco, Opera, Opera Mini, Strategy Analytics, Transpera

This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 6:14 pm and is filed under Data Points, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, Mobile Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.