3foldComm

Ask your Magic 8 Ball what the next big thing is and it will for sure say, “Mobile. Duh.”

It’s hardly a secret that mobile marketing is the biggest thing since…well, mobile. In fact, a recent study by Morgan Stanley that declared mobile web to overtake traditional web by 2015, becoming at least 2x the size of desktop Internet when comparing Internet users to mobile subscribers.

Driven primarily by 3G services and an availability of anytime, anywhere wireless capabilities, consumers mobile online activity has risen dramatically with the now 24/7 access to cloud-based content and applications.

Some interesting stats:

• Video accounts for 69% of mobile data traffic.
• Real-time technology and location-based services are expected to drive mobile retail.
• Facebook is the single largest repository for user-generated content such as pics, videos, links and comments.
• Apple and Android platforms are gaining in the mobile OS market, while Windows Mobile, RIM and Palm decline.
• The overlap between mobile users and social web users continues to grow; more and more users are accessing the social web from a mobile device.
• Games are bigger than any other app category — both for the social web and for mobile devices.
• Online ad sales are growing, but virtual goods, premium content and other models are big business, especially for the mobile web.
• The average iPhone user only spends 45% of his on-device time making voice calls.

Consumer usage of wireless data (including video + images + content + communications) continues to grow rapidly and there are three platforms demonstrating especially strong momentum that combines consumer and developer adoption and interest:

1. Facebook: Increasingly becoming a desktop + mobile communications hub.
2. Mobile: Led by Apple’s iPhone / iTouch / iTunes ecosystem, the mobile market empowers brands and developers to mine an entirely new channel to reach existing and potential customers, advocates, and influencers.
3. The web: Online usage of products / services are gaining share over their offline counterparts and growing wireless usage is expanding market opportunities.

Other findings about mobile-marketing users:

• They are more likely than non-users to regularly give advice to others about products or services they have purchased
• They are more likely to regularly seek advice than non-users
• Their top triggers for online searches are magazines, coupons and cable TV
• After conducting online search, they are most likely to communicate about it with others via face-to-face, email and cell phone
• Both mobile marketing users and non-users go to iTunes.com, YouTube.com and LimeWire.com – in that order- most often to access or download video/music content
• They are more likely to visit Facebook, Myspace and Twitter “regularly,” vs. non-users.

However, with increasing opportunity comes increasing challenges for marketers:

• 66.8% of overall respondents don’t like text ads (vs. 63.5% in 2008)
• 60.2% don’t like voicemail ads (vs. 56.8% in 2008)
• 59.6% don’t like video ads (vs. 56.1% in 2008)
• 58% of people think marketers need permission prior to sending an ad (vs. 55.6% in 2008)
• 52.1% think mobile ads are an invasion of privacy (vs. 49.5% in 2008).