Forget native; forget the digerati; the world is now Globile

After a busy start to the year that has seen both his ‘meeja’ social life and Newsline presence suffer, Greg Grimmer, now global COO of mobile startup Fetch, is back – and according to him, the world’s gone Globile.

So dear readers, apparently you have been clamouring for my words?

For those that haven’t followed my LinkedIn profile with the same assiduity as mobile ad network sales reps in APAC, I have spent the last five months as global COO of the award-winning, achingly cool, Shoreditch-based mobile marketing agency Fetch.

However, before you accuse me of bandwagon jumping I can refer you to my 1998 recollections.

This move has curtailed my amateur columnist career at MediaTel and also meant that I’ve avoided Cannes, The House Festival, summer drinking in Soho and a host of other very pleasant meeja events that a man of my calibre would expect to be present at.

In a mobile world, I have been stuck at my work station; but the time has come for me to educate you about my new domain.

Because even though most of us still have to deal with 2% battery life by lunchtime, mobile is unequivocally taking over the world. It’s a beast; a complex beast. You’ve got 4G, NFC, BLE, Wi-Fi and countless other TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms to the uninitiated) to navigate through.

But let’s move on; we need a new cliché and for those that know me well I’m the man to deliver that to you.

Globile is our new watch word: Global and Mobile.

It’s how you will all live your lovely lives and you have me to thank for saving you three syllables every time you discuss it. And why would you not discuss it?

You have apps – 1.2 million of them in the Apple app store alone, according to Tim Cook, CEO of the media world’s favourite brand. (As an aside, having moved my patronage from Soho House to Shoreditch House I have recently bought Apple shares – I saw some wannabe hipster thrown out last week for daring to get his Dell out of his bag!)

Anyway, back to the Globile world. In comparison to desktop, users on mobile devices behave fundamentally different; they display different purchase behaviours and engage with a multitude of payment methods.

The techniques employed to track all of these are different too. Almost everything is different. Mobile is an increasingly complex industry and in 2014 it is simply no longer enough to “have a mobile strategy”. You need a mobile expert to help steer with clarity and accurately predict the future trends in the industry.

Massive growth in the UK

The 63 million people in Britain currently own 82 million active mobile phone subscriptions, with smartphone penetration at 62% and growing rapidly – mainly thanks to the increasing number of affordable Android handsets.

This figure is going to continue rising and is hugely important for not only large organisations looking to get the most from mobile, but also smaller businesses, highlighted by the fact that of the 62% with smartphones in the UK, 87% of these are regularly searching for local information via their phone. Oh, and did I mention that these figures don’t even include the tens of millions of tablets?

Phablets and Apple growth in Asia

Despite Western Europe and North America appearing further ahead on the mobile adoption curve there is still huge scope for growth – and perhaps even more so in other parts of the world, particularly Asia. China alone has 1.2 billion active mobile subscriptions. Moreover, if we delve deeper into stats around the region, we discover that 98% of those users with smartphones regularly research products on mobile, with 69% having made at least one purchase.

So what?

“So smartphone adoption is rising, where’s the complexity in that?”

Being a mobile expert isn’t just about smartphones; tablet sales worldwide have been relentless since the introduction of the iPad. However, in this ever-changing landscape, they are suddenly now slowing as the world’s obsession with ‘phablets’ increases.

Last year in one quarter alone Asia saw 26 million phablets shipped to the region – double the number of tablets. The industry is incredibly fast-moving and global – much more so than anything before – and being able to predict what’s next is everything; just ask Blackberry.

In my short time with the Globile experts at Fetch I’ve seen our people working with the likes of Google and Facebook to harness the latest innovations which gives us the ability to keep client businesses in front of the Globile consumer and at the forefront of the Globile economy.

Mobile experts have a comprehensive grasp of the app economy across multiple platforms, which are exponentially growing in size and importance. It’s one of the reasons Fetch finds itself positioned in the app epicentres of London, San Francisco, Berlin and Hong Kong.

If you haven’t kept up with mobile, frankly you should be scared. Very scared. Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer stated earlier this year that their mobile traffic will surpass desktop by the end of this year – the company now has 430 million mobile users, up 43% from a year ago. And all of this was before she spent a rumoured $300 million of the company’s cash war chest on buying Flurry last week.

Mobile is the single most important consumer technology today and you may already have a specialist but it’s an expert who will help you achieve the most from the industry.

I recently met a global head of mobile from one of the big media shops. He said to me: “You make my life a misery. I have to fly round the world talking to clients who are happy to pay lip service to the Globile tsunami – none of them have any intention of changing their marketing strategy to spend more in mobile.”

Luckily I now don’t have this problem.

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