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Tuesday, October 27, 2009
According to a new survey commissioned by 1020 Placecast and conducted by Harris Interactive, American consumers are receptive to opt-in mobile marketing messages from brick-and-mortar businesses. 42% of 18 to 34 year old cell phone owners and 33% of 35 to 44 year olds are at least somewhat interested in receiving alerts about sales on their cell phones from their favorite establishments.Men are more interested than women:
Only 1% cell phone owners currently receive alerts about sales at their favorite establishments on their phones, yet 26% would be at least somewhat interested in receiving such alerts, assuming they were permission-based. Food, entertainment and consumer products top the list of categories Of those interested in receiving alerts, 53% would be at least somewhat interested in being notified about restaurant specials around them.In addition, about 2-in-5 of these adults would like to receive alerts about sales for:
About another 3-in-10 of these adults would want to be alerted about:
About one quarter would want to be notified about:
The survey found that about 9-in-10 U.S. adults have made an impulse purchase when they were out shopping in a store based on a sale or a special near where they were.
Among cell phone owners in households with children under 18, 37% are at least somewhat interested in receiving opt-in alerts on their mobile phones. This number rises to 44% in households with children under age 6. According to Kathryn Koegel of Primary Impact Research, “Many American consumers have their mobile devices with them all day long, including when they are shopping… reaching a receptive audience… presents a big opportunity to influence impulse purchases… ” For more information about 1020 Placecast and this study, please visit here. Or, to access the PDF file, please go to Placecast here. |
In that year, Gartner forecasts Android will actually rank second globally, behind the Symbian OS, which is used in Nokia devices that are highly popular in Europe and many countries outside the U.S. Symbian now runs on about half of all smartphones, but will fall to 39% in 2012, Gartner says.
The Gartner forecast gives Android such an enormous surge in popularity because of a variety of factors, but chiefly because of Google Inc.’s backing of Android and the range of cloud computing functions and related applications that Google will make available in coming years, Ken Dulaney said in an exclusive interview with Computerworld.
While the first Android product release, the T-Mobile G1, only won a lukewarm response, Android 1.5 (code-named Cupcake) is well thought-out, Dulaney said. Other expected improvements in Android for its application store and development environment will be “backed by the power of Google’s search engine,” he said. “Google’s other up-and-coming consumer and enterprise products should make[Android] a dominant platform.”
And because Android and Google operate in an “integrative and open environment, [they] could easily top … the singular Apple,” he said.
Android will also run on phones from several manufacturers, helping its growth, especially when compared to the iPhone, Dulaney said. In 2010, as many as 40 models of Android devices will ship, and the next OS update, code-named Donut, will ship in the second quarter, Dulaney predicted.
As an early example of how Android should be successful, Dulaney pointed to Motorola’s Cliq, with its Motoblur interface that he said “handles communications very effectively.”
To explain, Dulaney said that smartphone interfaces seem to have headed off in two divergent ways, with iPhone’s heavy focus on applications compared to Windows Mobile’s and Symbian’s focus on smartphone tasks and communications. But Android, he said, “has blended a focus on applications and tasks pretty well.”
Android’s interface allows a user to perform frequently needed tasks without going back to the top of the logic tree to switch between tasks, he said. Makers of Android “have done a good job of knowing how you work on a phone,” he said.
The complete Gartner forecast for smartphone OSes by the end of 2012 puts Symbian on top with 203 million devices sold, and 39% of the market. Android will be second with nearly 76 million units sold, and 14.5% of the market.
Coming in a close third, the iPhone will ship on 71.5 million devices in 2012, giving a 13.7% market share. Windows Mobile will finish fourth, with 66.8 million units sold, or 12.8% of the market.
Very close behind Windows Mobile, the BlackBerry OS will sell on 65.25 million devices in 2012, Gartner forecasts, making it fifth with 12.5% market share.
Various Linux devices will sell 28 million units, at 5.4% market share, in sixth place. Palm Inc.’s webOS will sell on 11 million units in 2012, about 2.1% of the market, in seventh place, Gartner says.
Android will have moved up the most from 2009 to 2012, from sixth place to second. BlackBerry will have moved down the most, from second to fifth, while iPhone will remain in third position and Windows Mobile will remain in fourth position, Gartner says.
OCTOBER 5, 2009
Demographics evening out
As mobile Internet usage increases, men are losing their advantage in numbers. They still account for the majority of users, but women are catching up quickly.
Mobile Internet visitors were up 34% year over year to 56.9 million in July 2009, according to The Nielsen Company. Growth among women outpaced the average rate by some 9 percentage points. Men still made up 53% of the mobile Web audience in July.
What keeps men so attached to their mobile phones for Web browsing? They make up the bulk of the audience for tech, sports and news content—and, unsurprisingly, for men’s magazine Maxim. Fully 95% of the Gizmodo mobile audience is male, and men accounted for about nine in 10 mobile visitors to NBA and NFL sites in July.
Women, by contrast, embraced the mobile Web for access to celebrity news, shopping sites and social networks. Females outnumbered males in their mobile visits to sites such as People.com, AT&T search and Horoscope.com.
Teens, adults ages 25 to 34 and those ages 55 and older also adopted the mobile Internet faster than the average rate, but, especially in the case of teens and seniors, from a very small base. Takeup was slowest among young adults ages 18 to 24.
In July 2009, users ages 65 and older still made up only 3% of the total. Just 12% of mobile Web browsers were under age 18.
eMarketer, which includes both Web browsing and the use of mobile apps in its figures, estimates there will be 73.7 million mobile Internet users in the US in 2009, an increase of 26.3% over 2008.