10 MILLION PEOPLE IN BRITAIN GET ONLINE ON THEIR MOBILE PHONES, or 20 percent of those with handsets, says some new research from Nielsen. The firm also says that smartphone ownership increased by more than 10 percent over the last three months, with 6.2 million of the devices now in use in the UK

Smartphones now account for one out of every seven phones, and Nielsen says that Blackberry gained the most smartphone market share during the period, up five points to 19 percent. Nokia’s woes continued, with its share of the total UK market down 7 percent to 44 percent. Source

The bottom line: If only 20 percent of UK mobile users are getting online with their phones, there’s still a lot of growth left in that market for content providers and mobile marketers.

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ONE IN SIX HANDSETS WILL HAVE NFC FUNCTIONALITY BY 2014, according to Juniper Research, as use spreads outside of Japan. The company says that in five years, the value of transactions processed over NFC worldwide will exceed $110 billion, with mobile payments and retail applications (such as coupons) the most widely used applications, though ticketing (such as for public transport) will also play a roll in pushing the rollout. Source

The bottom line: It seems like we’ve been waiting on NFC for a long time, and in the west, it’s never moved much past the trial stage and isn’t readily available in handsets. That’s one problem, but another is the cost of POS equipment for retailers, who won’t want to shell out for readers and other gear unless there’s really something valuable in it for them.

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CONSUMERS WHO RESPOND TO MOBILE MARKETING ARE MORE AVID USERS OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES, says a new report from BIGresearch, and tend to be young men, the company says. It also adds that since its last study of US consumers in 2008, the percentage of people who don’t like to get SMS ads (66.8 percent), as well as the percentage of people who believe marketers need permission before sending mobile ads (58 percent), have increased. Source

The bottom line: With two-thirds of people saying they don’t like text ads, and almost 60 percent saying there needs to be opt-in, one message is clear: sending out blanket text ads (especially without permission) isn’t an effective use of mobile marketing.

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DESPITE THE MOBILE’S CONNECTION TO USER-GENERATED CONTENT, people prefer to watch professional video content on their handsets, according to research from Real Networks. It says that while YouTube is the most popular UGC video site on mobile, it’s eclipsed by content from pros (at least in the US), such as NBC, Fox, The Weather Channel, MTV, Comedy Central and ESPN.(Source: a Real Networks “mini-bulletin email)

The bottom line: One possible explanation for this is that users on mobile are task-focused: that is, they want to see what the weather is going to be, or they want to see a certain sports clip, and the professional content is better for that than something like YouTube. Also, the browsing and finding experience of the professionally curated content may be simpler than with many UGC sites on mobile. Or, it could simply be that many of these professional channels are accessed through a carrier portal, so they’re more prominent to users, or may work more reliably than some UGC sites.

Tags: Comedy Central, ESPN, Fox, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Social Networking, MTV, NBC, NFC, Nielsen, Real Networks, Social Media Marketing, The Weather Channel, UGC

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 7:51 pm and is filed under Data Points, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Research, Mobile Social Networking. 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.