Mobile Users Go Online To Socialize
Americans are spending an average of 2.7 hours per day on the mobile Internet, with 91 percent of mobile phone users going online to socialize compared with 79 percent of traditional desktop users, according to Ruder Finn’s Mobile Intent Index study.
Mobile phone users are 1.6 times more likely to manage finances online compared to traditional desktop users, and mobile phone users are 1.4 times more likely than traditional desktop users to rally support for a cause.
The study asked respondents how frequently they use their mobile phones to go online for 295 reasons. The results show that immediacy is the primary factor driving behavior.
Three in five (61 percent) respondents download applications at least once per month while 36 percent of users download applications from social networking sites at least once per month. When shopping, men are more likely than women to compare prices (47 percent vs. 30 percent), but women are more likely to purchase (40 percent vs. 30 percent).
Global Mobile Workforce Still Growing
The world’s mobile worker population will pass the 1 billion mark this year and grow to nearly 1.2 billion people – more than a third of the world’s workforce – by 2013, according to IDC. The most significant gains will be in the emerging economies of Asia/Pacific, where a strong economic recovery and new interest in unified communications will drive healthy growth in all aspects of mobility spending.
Outside the United States and Japan, where mobile worker population penetration has essentially peaked, there are large worker populations that are still growing, says research analyst Sean Ryan. While some barriers to adoption will still have to be overcome, the potential market for mobility solutions is enormous.
Among the key findings from IDC’s forecast are the following:
• The United States has the highest percentage of mobile workers in its workforce, with 72.2 percent of the workforce mobile in 2008. The United States will remain the most highly concentrated market for mobile workers with 75.5 percent of the workforce, or 119.7 million workers, being mobile in 2013.
• Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) represents the largest total number of mobile workers throughout the forecast, with 546.4 million mobile workers in 2008 growing to 734.5 million or 37.4 percent of the total workforce in 2013. At the end of the forecast, 62 percent of the world’s mobile workforce will be based in the APeJ region.
• Western Europe’s mobile workforce will enjoy a healthy compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6 percent over the forecast period to reach 129.5 million mobile workers (50.3 percent of the workforce) in 2013, surpassing the total number of mobile workers in the United States.
• Japan’s mobile worker population will total 49.3 million in 2013, representing 74.5 percent of its total workforce. Like the United States, this is essentially the sustainable limit of Japan’s mobile worker penetration.
eBook Reader Market to Hit $2.5B
You know it’s hot, but how hot is the eBook reader market? According to the Yankee Group, the sector will grow from $1.3 billion in revenue in 2010 to $2.5 billion by 2013.
As devices such as Amazon’s Kindle, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Sony’s Reader, Interead’s COOL-ER and enTourage’s eDGe adopt more palatable price points, Yankee Group sees the average price of eBook readers declining by roughly 15 percent per year for the next five years, resulting in a 55 percent increase in adoption rate year-over-year.
Separately, Strategy Analytics expects Apple’s iPad will cannibalize existing product categories, including eBook readers, netbooks, smartbooks and mobile Internet devices. But Apple won’t be alone in the new tablet category, which Strategy Analytics forecasts to be worth more than $11 billion in devices alone by 2014.
Study: Majority of Consumers Want to Visit Store
While carriers and other retailers are courting consumers online, a study shows three out of four consumers still want to visit a physical retail store when buying a communications product or service.
However, they are not very satisfied with their experience and rated it only slightly better than average, according to the Accenture study.
Accenture surveyed more than 3,000 consumers in 18 countries to find out how the physical retail channel can help communications companies build strong customer relationships. Accenture also asked consumers what they want to do in, and expect from, a provider’s retail store. More than half (56 percent) of the consumers surveyed had bought a mobile phone, wireless phone service plan or cable television service at a provider’s retail store in the past year. According to the survey:
• Seventy-five percent of consumers – especially professionals and 18- to 34 year-olds – want to visit a retail store when buying communications-related products and services, and 77 percent of all consumers think it’s important that a communications provider has a physical store they can visit.
• Sixty-three percent of consumers who purchased a communications product or service in the past year did so at a company-owned store.
• Seventy-seven percent of consumers said the quality of the store experience is an important factor in their decision to do business with a communications provider.
• Although more than half of consumers (59 percent) said their experience in a provider’s retail store was good, 30 percent said their experience was fair or poor and only 11 percent said their experience was excellent.