ALMOST 30 PERCENT OF US MOBILE SUBSCRIBERS USE THE MOBILE WEB AT LEAST ONCE PER MONTH, eMarketer reports, based on data from BIA/Kelsey and Constat. That’s up from 22.3 percent last year, but the boom doesn’t stop there: the figures say that 21 percent of US mobile users get online on their mobile device at least 10 times per week, up from 15 percent in 2008.

The survey found that nearly half of US subs use text messaging at least 10 times per week, and a fifth use mobile email that much. Popular mobile web tasks include local searches, looking for movie or entertainment info and information about restaurants and bars. Source

The bottom line: Awareness of the mobile web is booming in the US, and usage is following.

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MORE THAN 1 BILLION MOBILE DEVICES WILL BE CONNECTED TO THE WEB IN 2010, says research firm Gartner. That’s nearly as many as web-connected PCs (1.3 billion), and the higher growth rate of mobile devices mean it won’t be long before the mobile/PC internet tipping point is reached. Source

The bottom line: This has been coming for a while, but Gartner says we’re now just on the cusp of it. This means that the mobile device will be a primary internet device, not a second-class citizen deserving only of cut down and limited services.

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MICROBLOGGING SITES ARE DRIVING HUGE INCREASES IN MOBILE TRAFFIC THROUGH URL-SHORTENING SERVICES, says Novarra, which provides web transcoding services for operators worldwide. The company says that in the first half of 2009, mobile page views for Twitter grew 3500 percent, leading to traffic increases of 1068 percent for services like bit.ly, which are often used to share links via Twitter. Source

The bottom line: This illustrates that a lot of people are increasingly using Twitter on their mobile device as well as on their PC, and they’re clicking through shared links just as they would on their computer.

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ANDROID DEVELOPERS AREN’T HAPPY WITH THE PLATFORM, according to a survey from location technology provider Skyhook Wireless. It says that 57 percent of Android developers aren’t happy with the profits the platform delivers them, 82 percent think Android Marketplace makes it hard to discover apps, and 43 percent think they’d sell more if Android used carrier billing or another simpler billing system. A further 46 percent are worried about device fragmentation on the platform.

A little digging draws up at least one catch to the survey, though: it surveyed only 30 developers for their opinion – hardly a huge sample. Source

The bottom line: It’s hard to draw too many conclusions from such a small sample. Also, a lack of comparative data for other platforms makes it difficult to assert if this is an Android-specific problem – but we’d bet a survey of any significant number of them would show that at least half aren’t happy with their profits.

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THE MOBILE MARKETING AND ADVERTISING MARKET WILL BE WORTH EUR 8.7 BILLION IN 2014, up from EUR 1 billion in 2008, says a new report from research firm Berg Insight. In five years, the company says that 8.7 billion will represent 11.7 percent of the total digital advertising market. Source

The bottom line: This is the latest in a number of similar stats that have piled up over the last few months, revealing the widespread belief that the mobile marketing market is about to boom.

Tags: Android, Android Marketplace, microblogging, Mobile Web, Novarra, Skyhook Wireless, Twitter

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Data Points, Location-based services, 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.