Media Healthcheck: January 2010
In keeping with several predictions that 2010 will finally be “the year of mobile”, January saw a host of forecasts claiming mobile was about to take-off in a major way.
A study from TNS showed strong promise for the mobile phone market in 2010, with 53% of Americans planning to buy a mobile handset over the next six months.
The study, of over 24,000 consumers in 35 markets, found that touchscreen phones are set to be the big winners, with 29% of US consumers looking to buy one as their next phone.
Smartphones, especially the iPhone, are one of the main drivers behind mobile’s predicted rise, and a forecast from Futuresource Consulting estimated that more than one billion people worldwide will own a smartphone by 2013.
David Luu, senior market analyst at Futuresource, said: “Last year, mobile phone ownership exceeded four billion users – which equates to nearly 60% of the world’s population.
“And in the face of a handset market which is slowing on the whole, smartphone sales are rising fast, with our year-end forecasts for 2009 showing smartphone sales representing 17% of total handset shipments.”
The increased popularity of smartphones also led Informa Telecoms & Media to predict that total mobile service revenues will exceed $1 trillion by 2013, despite a projected fall in voice revenues.
Mark Newman, chief research officer at Informa, said: “The growth in data revenues is being spurred by the rise in take-up of more advanced technologies and mobile broadband services, as well as new handset interfaces and mobile content strategies based on application stores rather than walled gardens.”
A big part of these revenues are expected to come from the growing apps market. DM2PRO and Quattro Wireless said that in the US there will be significant investment in mobile apps this year, with the iPhone the handset of choice.
January also saw a presentation by comScore’s Alistair Hill at the Mobile Games Forum in London, where it was revealed that the most downloaded iPhone app in the UK is the Carling iPint, which lets users pretend to drink a pint of beer.
The success of this branded content was in contrast to the top downloads in the US and Europe as a whole, where Facebook and music service Shazam are number one in their respective regions.
Sticking with social media, a survey from Alterian found that 66% of marketing professionals will be investing in social media marketing in the next 12 months.
The survey of 1,068 marketers also revealed that, of those investing in SMM, 40% said they would be moving more than a fifth of their traditional direct marketing budget to funding their SMM activities.