MOBILE SEARCH WILL TAKE UP ALMOST 75 PERCENT OF THE MOBILE AD MARKET BY 2013, according to a recent report from Citibank. The report says that SMS ads currently represent 63 percent of mobile ad spending, but this will drop to 9 percent in four years; display ads are projected to increase 5 points to 18 percent. The report says mobile search currently makes up about a quarter of the mobile ad market.

Overall, the mobile ad market is projected to rise from $160 million to $3.1 billion by 2013. Source

The bottom line: The prediction that search will take a growing chunk of mobile ad spending is a good one, but there’s one issue with this report: it ignores the idea that some other forms of mobile ads will emerge over the next few years. We’re still very early in the evolution of mobile marketing, so it’s reasonable to think that more forms, apart from the three mentioned here, will emerge. Peggy adds: This point has come through in my own mobile advertising research project, where executives revealed that  (surprisingly)ad spend on sponsored search and related schemes were low on the agenda. t The reason: mobile search is still riddled with shortcomings. More on why mobile search is broken here.

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NORTH AMERICANS ARE TAKING OUT MULTIPLE MOBILE SUBS, says Wireless Intelligence. It says that in the US and Canada, the average consumer had 1.3 mobile connections in Q3, and that while average revenue per connection is dropping, ARPU is actually going up – it’s just spread across more than one connection. The group says that real ARPU in North America has gone from $60 in 2006 to $64. Source

The bottom line: Expect to see this trend continue as more and more consumers adopt mobile-enabled netbooks, data dongles and other connected devices.

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MORE PEOPLE ARE FINDING THEIR WAY VIA MOBILE, according to a new report from Berg Insight. The firm says that the number of mobile subscribers downloading navigation apps and routes to their mobile devices doubled to 28 million in the first half of 2009 from the year-earlier period. The firm also says that the subscriber base will see a CAGR of about 34 percent over the next six years, resulting in a 160 million users by 2015. Source

The bottom line: The ability to look up maps and routes on mobile devices is one that many consumers love, and the continued growth of GPS-enabled handsets will certainly fuel growth in usage of navigation services. But the PND market won’t remain static: more and more cars will feature built-in satnav, and the price of standalone units will continue to fall, which may explain the relatively low prediction of 160 million users by 2015.

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SYMBIAN TO SHIP 180 MILLION HANDSETS A YEAR BY 2014, says Juniper Research. Despite the emergence and growth of other smartphone platforms, the firm says that shipments of devices running the Symbian platform will more than double over the next five years. Coupled with Android and LiMo devices, Juniper estimates the market for open-source handsets will be more than 220 million per year by that time.

Juniper further contends that the market will migrate towards open-source platforms, despite the popularity of the proprietary iPhone and BlackBerry platforms.  Source

The bottom line: Any decent smartphone OS should show volume gains over the next five years as sales of smartphones skyrocket. That said, the mass market doesn’t care about open-source vs. proprietary – they want devices that meet their needs, and there are multiple ways to skin this proverbial cat. The choice of open-source vs. proprietary is less important than getting the basic OS right, and then having an open enough platform to support app and service development.

Tags: GPS, local mobile search, Location-based services, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Search, navigation, Open OS, open-source platforms, PND, smartphone, Symbian

This entry was posted on Friday, October 16th, 2009 at 6:53 pm and is filed under Data Points, Local Search, Location-based services, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Research, Mobile Search. 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.