BII MOBILE INSIGHTS: The Best Way To Think About Your Mobile Strategy

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A Good Way To Think About Your Mobile Strategy (Massive Greatness)
Mobile Mobile Mobile Mobile Mobile Mobile Mobile Mobile Mobile Mobile... I could continue (as MG Siegler does for about three-quarters of the page) but I'll cut to the chase. It’s obvious, right? I’m hardly the first person to point this out. And yet, I still meet so many startups who are focusing on the desktop / laptop-based web first. I get that development and iteration are easier there, but it’s a mistake. Discovery is increasingly an issue, and monetization models are still being fully fleshed out. But, from a pure product perspective, those things don’t matter. What matters is that in the next five years every person on this planet is going to be using a mobile device. And these devices are going to be used far more than any traditional computer ever has been and ever will be.

85% Of The World's Population Covered By High-Speed Mobile Internet In 2017 (Ericsson)
This report is from June, but it reinforces the sentiment above. Ericsson releases its second Traffic and Market Report and revealed the following statistics, that by 2017:

85% of the world's population will have 3G coverage
50% of the world's population will be covered by 4G
Smartphone subscriptions expected to reach 3 billion
Global data traffic to grow 15 times

The main continuous trend identified in the report is that everything is going mobile. This evolution is mainly being driven by people's increasing demand for anywhere, anytime connectivity and the use of video, cloud-based services and the internet - but also by machine-to-machine connectivity.

mobile subscribers

50% Of The Globe Will Be Using The Internet Once A Month By 2017 (Forrester Research)
Forrester Research found that 2.4 billion people across the world use the Internet on a regular basis (at least once a month) from home, school, work, or any other location via a PC or a non-PC (mobile) Internet access device. This is expected to grow to 3.5 billion by 2017, representing nearly half of the 2017 overall world population of 7.4 billion. Forrester's forecast provides the details of the Internet population in 56 countries across five regions. One of the main factors of growth is increasing Internet connectivity (fixed broadband and mobile).

internet penetration 2012

Why Apple Doesn't Have A Fragmentation Problem (BI Intelligence)
Apple released the latest iteration of its mobile platform, iOS 6, on Wednesday and it looks like it has already made a huge dent in the platform's software distribution. According to ChartBoost (as well as Chitika), 15% of iOS users upgraded to iOS 6 in the first 24 hours it was available. Compare this to Android, where more than half of its users are still on Gingerbread, released in late 2010. Jelly Bean, released two months ago, only accounts for 1.2% of Android devices.

iOS 6 Migration

You Can't Wait On A Mobile Payments Strategy (Econsultancy)
In many cases, isn't a wait-and-see approach the most sensible path forward? When it comes to mobile payments, some experts are suggesting that companies can't wait. According to David Gardner at CMO.com, he estimates the value of mobile payments at some $600 billion within the next four years and given the near-ubiquity of mobile phones in the developed world, the rise of mobile payments would appear to be a when, not if, question. As Dr. Siddharth Shah, Adobe's director of business analytics, sees it, "it's safe to say that mobile transactions are the wave of the future." For that reason, he suggests that "right now the focus of CMOs should be [which] device is most appropriate for making mobile transactions better."

Publishers Blame Mobile Ad Agencies For Poor Sales (paidContent)
Publishers are seeing mobile audiences growing fast. But revenue is yet to catch up, and it’s the ad industry taking the blame. Mobile makes up a fifth of reader traffic for 87% of publishers, but only 29% of them are seeing the same proportion of revenue come from mobile, according to respondents to a census issued by the UK’s Association of Online Publishers (AOP). Asked to name the main inhibitors to mobile revenue generation, a majority blamed “agencies’ attitude toward mobile” (55%) and dependency on low-yield ad networks (52%).

inhibitors of mobile revenue

Even More Reasons Why Brands Should Have Mobile Friendly Websites (Artatm)
If you own a website that best fits in a PC browser then it is very difficult for users try and access your site. Here's why optimizing for mobile is crucial:

Missing out on perspective clients
Sheer growth of mobile users
Increase in mobile-only web users
Local mobile
Google's way of indexing mobile content is different
Websites are better than apps (up for discussion)
Google's recommendation

Now you just have to decide whether you go with a responsive web design or a separate mobile website.

The MMA Releases Mobile Analytics Guide (MMA via Media Post)
Improved measurement is often cited as a condition for higher mobile ad spending. To that end, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has released a new primer on mobile analytics covering metrics related to the mobile Web, apps and messaging as well as factors such as location, time, and device. The white paper also addresses analytics in the emerging realm of m-commerce and mobile payments. The report acknowledges the challenges to measurement including different smartphone operating systems and browsers, screen sizes, the lack of cookies for tracking and privacy considerations. But it also highlights how mobile use results in analytics across entire marketing cycle from awareness to purchase to advocacy.

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