BII MOBILE INSIGHTS: Worldwide Mobile Phone Growth Lowest In Three Years

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Worldwide Mobile Phone Growth Expected To Fall (IDC via Mobile Marketing Watch)
Here’s a headline you don’t see every day. The IDC finds that the worldwide mobile phone market is now forecast to grow 1.4% year-over-year in 2012. "Sluggish economic conditions worldwide have cast a pall over the mobile phone market this year," says Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. "However, the fourth quarter will be relatively bright due in part to sales of high-profile smartphones, such as the iPhone 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy S3, in addition to lower-cost Android-powered smartphones shipped to China and other high-growth emerging markets." Growth this year is the lowest annual growth rate in three years despite a projected record number of smartphone shipments in the high-volume holiday season. Vendors will ship more than 1.7 billion mobile phones this year. In 2016, IDC forecasts 2.2 billion mobile phones will be shipped.

How Shoppers Use Smartphones In-Store (Vibes via Econsultancy)
Anyone who owns a smartphone will know that they come in extremely handy for checking prices and reviews when out shopping. A report from Vibes published in September found that 80% of smartphone owners always or often have their phone with them while shopping. Of those consumers, a third (33%) have used their device to look up a product on a competitor’s site while 20% have researched the store’s own website.

in-store mobile activities

The second most popular activity was looking up a product review (31%), followed by scanning a QR code for more information (27%). Of those who do research other options, 25% left the store and made a purchase from a competitor, representing 6% of smartphone owners overall. This may seem like a small number, but as smartphones become increasingly prevalent this number is likely to increase unless stores give consumers the information they need to make an informed purchase decision. There are 8 studies highlighted in the report, read more for other ways shoppers are using technology in-store.

Mobile Changes How Consumers Search (Forrester via Mobile Commerce Daily)
Forrester Research analyst, Sucharita Mulpuru, says media companies can leverage the built-in features of mobile devices such as swiping to connect content to commerce. “We see massive changes in the way that people discover products, and a large percentage of it does happen on things like the mobile phone and tablets." In a recent survey, Forrester found that as media companies have relied on digital more, paid subscriptions, market share and audiences have grown. In fact, more than 50% of the media companies surveyed in the study said that mobile and Web have positively affected paid subscriptions. Additionally, 65% reported an increase in overall reach, and 60% increased their overall advertising revenues. Furthermore, 35% of the companies surveyed in the study said that a print and digital subscriber was seen as more valuable for the media organization.

Reasons Why Mobile Marketing Is Still A Challenge (Adotas)
Many brands and agencies have remained cautious in utilizing mobile channels in their marketing efforts. Here are some of the typical challenges associated with mobile outreach:

Difficulty in tracking the right metrics
Understanding consumer context is important
Understanding mobile behavior by device
Questionable effectiveness of mobile ads
Responsive web design is not always best optimized for mobile experiences

The growing popularity of mobile engagement comes with its set of challenges: metrics that may not be obvious and difficult to track, the need to customize your message based on consumer context, and currently recommended practices that may contradict your objectives. With that, there is plenty of opportunity for new mobile tools, innovative solutions and experiments.

10 Great Tools For Testing Your Website On Mobile Devices (Webitect)
Smartphones and other handheld devices contribute substantially to the overall viewership of any website. The latest estimates show that it is not long before mobile Internet users dominate website usage. In such a scenario it would be a cardinal sin to ignore mobile users when it comes to development of a website. One key to making a website mobile friendly is to test it for different smartphone platforms and other handheld devices. There are a number of mobile phone emulators available in the market and we’ll take a look at some of the most popular:

iPhone Tester
iPhoney
Mobile Phone Emulator
iPad Peek
Gomez
Opera Mini Simulator
Reponsivepx
MobiReady
Screenfly
ProtoFluid

Most of these phone emulators are free and are easy to use. The future is mobile, and under no circumstance can you afford to miss out on any of the smartphone platforms when it comes to building a website which reaches out to all your targeted customers.

Pretty Soon We'll Spend More Time With Smartphones Than TVs (Flurry via Business Insider)
Cool chart from mobile analytics firm, Flurry. It says smartphone owners are spending 127 minutes per day with their smartphones, up from 66 minutes per day in 2010. This means that smartphone users spend more time with mobile phones and apps than they do on the web. The time spent is rapidly approaching the time we spend watching TV.

chart of the day, time spent on web vs mobile apps vs tv consumption, december 2012

With mobile consumers spending much more time on phones and tablets, there’s a large opportunity to develop compelling mobile apps and games, not to mention advertising potential.

Small Business Owners, Now's The Time To Build Apps (Bizness Apps via VentureBeat)
Small businesses need to get in touch with their inner app developer. People spend inordinate amounts of time with their phones, so why not be where your customers are? According to an infographic created by Bizness Apps, people have spent nearly an hour more on mobile apps thus far this month than they have on the mobile web. And 79% of smartphone owners use their phone while shopping. Indeed on Cyber Monday, Amazon’s mobile app saw a 171% increase in mobile traffic. But, proving that people like to use their smartphone to comparison shop in stores, Amazon saw mobile traffic go up by 222% on Black Friday.

businesses to create mobile apps