BII MOBILE INSIGHTS: Mobile Commerce Accounts For 15% Of All Online Sales

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Voice Mail In Decline With Rise Of Text, Loss Of Patience (USA Today)
I always disliked voice mail. With the rise of texting, instant chat and transcription apps, more people are ditching the venerable tool that once revolutionized the telephone business, displaced armies of secretaries and allowed us to eat dinner more or less in peace. The behavioral shift is occurring in tandem with the irreversible fading of voice calls in general, prompting more wireless carriers to offer unlimited voice minutes. Vonage, an Internet phone company, says the number of voice-mail messages left on user accounts was down 8% in July from a year ago. Checking one's voice mail seems to be considered an even a bigger chore, falling 14%.

July 2012 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share (comScore)
comScore released its U.S. mobile data for July showing both Google and Apple gaining market share, while all others continued to decline. Collectively RIM, Microsoft and Nokia now control less than 15% of the total smartphone market. Samsung was the top hardware OEM with just over 25% of the market while Apple had 16%. In terms of operating system, Android represented 52.2% of U.S. smartphone handsets in the market with iOS at 33.4%, up 2% since April. That is a bit stronger than Android growth during the same time period. Microsoft continued to see its Windows Phone platform share decline to 3.6%. All in all, 114 million Americans own smartphones, representing just over 49% of the U.S. adult mobile population.

Study Suggests Four Of Ten Mobile Ad Clicks Are Worthless (ReadWriteWeb)
The good news: The number of click-throughs on mobile advertisements that were mistaken or fraudulent dropped slightly over the last year. The bad news: As much as 40% of clicks on mobile ads are so-called worthless clicks, offering no return on investment for the advertiser, according to a new study commissioned by Trademob (a Berlin-based mobile app marketing platform). The company analyzed six million mobile advertising clicks on 10 of the biggest mobile advertising networks. Conclusion: Advertisers are wasting a lot of money on mobile ads. The study was conducted in June and found that 22% of ad clicks are “misclicks,” or accidental clicks, and 18% were fraudulent. Those accidental and fraudulent clicks had a conversion rate of less than 0.1%.

Four Ways Brands Can Leverage Video-Sharing Apps (iMedia Connection)
Brands and advertisers are beginning to flock toward social video-sharing apps such as Viddy and Socialcam. According to comScore, more than 180 million consumers are watching more than 20 hours of online video a month in the U.S. alone. Here are ways social video sharing can help you market your brand:

Teasers and trailers
Sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes looks
Product updates
Promotions

Although the user base of these apps have been a reason for debate, they reach tens of millions of consumers and bring together the social and video worlds to create one of the best ways to engage consumers.

Android Security Suffers As Malware Explodes By 700% (VentureBeat)
Now the really bad news: Mobile malware tracked by McAfee has exploded this year, growing almost 700% over 2011. Almost all of it, perhaps 85%, targets smartphones running Android. The attacks range from the traditional and fairly well known email-with-bogus-attachments to the downright Machiavellian: drive-by downloads. Similarly to desktop drive-bys, simply visiting a site initiates the attack. The big surprise in the huge increase on Android isn’t that Android is being attacked: Google’s smartphone platform has been a key focus for the bad guys for some time. The big surprise is that Google has not managed to stem the tide in any significant way.

Six Ways Brands Can Achieve Mobile ROI (iMedia Connection)
Mobile usage is growing at a fast pace. In fact, adoption of this platform is happening quicker than any other technology in the last century. Mobile revenue has a long way to go to catch up. Brands must have flexible iteration, respond to analytics, and adjust appropriately to keep users engaged and maximize monetization:

Do not build to the least common denominator
Define your KPIs
Account for the sources of traffic
Know consumer usage patterns and habits
Respond to consumer feedback and iterate
Capitalize on mobile-specific opportunities

Whether you're a content company or a marketer, the time is now to make mobile a key part of your mix.

Things You Can Do To Make Your Site Faster For Mobile Users (Web Performance Today)
Performance experts are contributing their perspectives to increase speed:

Consolidate resources
Use browser caching and localStorage
Embed resources in HTML for first-time use
Use HTML5 server-sent events
Eliminate redirects

There are 10 more to combat slower networks, slower browser parsing speeds and smaller caches.

What Consumers Buy On Their Phones (BI Intelligence)
Consumers buy a diverse range of products on their smartphones. According to a Millennial Media and comScore study of mobile entertainment, 47% of smartphone owners have purchased some form of digital content on their phones, such as movies, tv shows, music, or eBooks while 37% have purchased clothing or accessories. As we discuss in our mobile usage report, mobile content consumption is generally an additive activity, they buy more than they otherwise would. The range and popularity of products purchased on smartphones is surprisingly high, but digital content is probably bought with greater frequency because it is built directly into the phone.

Retailers Make Mobile Commerce Gains (MediaPost)
A recent IBM benchmark report showed that mobile commerce accounted for 15% of all online sales in the second quarter, up from 8% a year earlier. One factor behind that increase could simply be that more retailers now offer their own apps. A new study from cross-channel marketing specialist CrossView shows that 56% of retailers have shopping apps, up from just 12% in 2011. Some other fun facts:

92% of retailers enabled social sharing online in 2012, up from 88% last year
79% offered the same marketing promotion across all touch points, up from 65%
72% offered ratings and reviews online, a 39% increase
78% showed estimated shipping charges online, up from 36%.

The study also highlighted continuing weak points for retailers. For example, only half of call-center customer-service reps could see product availability in local stores, while only about half of in-store sales staff could check availability in other stores. And just 28% of retailers offer in-store pick-up for products purchased online.

Mobile Web Users On The Rise In China (China Daily)
The number of China's mobile Internet users is expected to be more than 520 million by the end of the year and will exceed the number of desktop Web users next year, according to a report by Zero2IPO Group. In 2011, the revenue from China's mobile Internet industry was 101.7 billion yuan ($16 billion), up 37% year-on-year. The increase was largely due to bigger investments in added-value mobile services by telecom carriers. In addition, the enthusiasm of third-party providers helped to develop attractive applications, which increased people's willingness to pay for the services. Mobile gaming is still one of the hottest sectors in the mobile Web industry. The number of mobile gaming players in China will be 178 million this year, with a market volume of more than 18 billion yuan (~$2.8 billion).

The Current State of Mobile Gaming (BI Intelligence)
Gaming is one of the fastest-growing usage categories in mobile, with huge growth seen in Apple's iOS and Google's Android platforms. In particular, social mobile gaming, enabled by always-connected smartphones and the "freemium" revenue model, is particularly strong. BI Intelligence has produced a new report on Mobile Gaming, taking a look at the size of the mobile gaming market, exploring the demographics of mobile gamers, analyzing the successful pricing, business, and monetization strategies of mobile gaming apps, and handicapping the future prospects for mobile gaming developers.

iPhone Games Charts