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Home / Mobile marketing tools / Stats corner / Global mobile statistics 2012: all quality mobile marketing research, mobile Web stats, subscribers, ad revenue, usage, trends

Global mobile statistics 2012: all quality mobile marketing research, mobile Web stats, subscribers, ad revenue, usage, trends
February 2012: The essential compendium of need-to-know statistics. Beware of media hype and mobile myth put your mobile strategy on a sound footing with the latest research from credible independent experts. Global mobile subscribers, handset sales, smartphone market share, mobile Web usage, mobile apps, mobile ad spend, top mobile operators and mobile financial services.

LATEST UPDATE (February, 2012): Adds Mobile devices shipments 2011: Nokia remains number one. Smartphone shipments: Samsung is top dog. Smartphone operating systems Android is nearly half smartphones shipped. Global Web hits from mobile devices. Cellular subscriptions worldwide: 6 billion. Latest subscriber stats for top three countries: China and Indianow account for over 30 percent of world subs, both rapidly approaching 1 billion and dwarfing subs in third-place USA. Global and regional Mobile Web usage stats: 1.2 billion active mobile-broadband subscriptions worldwide; Asia is top region; Top 10 mobile Web countries: South Korea and Japan lead in mobile broadband penetration. VC investment in mobile in 2011: $6.3 billion or 42.4 percent of total budgets. Top US mobile ad networks by revenue are Google, Millennial Media, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Jumptap. Googles $2.5 billion in annual revenue from mobile advertising. eBay expects customers to buy and sell $8 billion of merchandise in 2012. PayPal expects to see $7 billion in mobile payment volume in 2012.

The mobiThinking compendium of mobile statistics and research

The stats, all the stats and nothing but the stats In the past two years, we have gone from a smattering of mobile statistics to an abundance of useful information. But there's still a long way to go, there are still huge gaps in our knowledge, some countries enjoy a proliferation of data sources, while others have little or none; and the quality of statistics varies incredibly. As telecoms regulators and industry associations start to collect and share meaningful data, things will only get better. An unfortunate side effect of the medias recent surge of enthusiasm for mobile in the past year is a tendency to highlight data of dubious quality (often when better is available), and/or widespread misunderstanding, misreporting and failure to qualify figures they have cherry-picked. This isn't just misleading and confusing, it's damaging. If brands are persuaded by hype to divert funds into niche, ill-thought-through mobile projects and then get burnt, the whole mobile business suffers. This mobile stats compendium which is regularly updated - hopefully goes some way to putting right some of the sins of the last few years. But please remember that even the best quality independent statistics are speculative to some degree stats are not facts. If you use any of the stats, please remember to source and link to both the analysts and to mobiThinking. Please do not republish more than 5 percent of the content without seeking permission. Thanks to all the analysts, associations and regulators that continue to send us their research. Please keep us updated: editor(at)mobiThinking.com. Be the first to know when we add new stats: @mobithinking

The Compendium of global mobile stats received 470,000 Pageviews in 2011, check out mobiThinkings other top content: Most popular content on mobiThinking in 2011. Also see:
The Guide to mobile awards 75 video case studies from winners at Global Mobile Awards Cannes Lions MMA Awards etc. Guide to mobile ad networks 18 top mobile ad networks profiled in full. Guide to mobile agencies 12 leading mobile agencies profiled in full. Guides to the worlds top mobile markets in-depth guides to 11 countries. 19 video interviews from New York and London 19 leading mobile experts share their tips and experience. Guide to mobile events discounts and free tickets to be won for must-attend mobile events.

We had more than 425 million mobile monthly active users in December 2011. In 2011, mobile usage of Facebook increased in markets around the world, including major developed markets such as the United States where smartphone penetration grew rapidly Improving our mobile products and increasing mobile usage of Facebook are key company priorities that we believe are critical to help us maintain and grow our user base and engagement over the long term. We expect consumers around the world will continue to increase the amount of time they spend and the information they share and consume through mobile devices. Facebook IPO statement (February, 2012).

Those statistics in a nutshell:

N.B. This bit is just a taster, an introduction/index, scroll down or follow the links to be taken to in-depth coverage of all the stats, with tables and links to all the sources, below. PART A: Mobile subscribers; handset data; mobile operators 1) There are 5.9 billion mobile subscribers (that's 87 percent of the world population). Growth is led by China andIndia, which now account for over 30 percent of world subs, What other medium offers that reach? 2) Mobile devices sales rose in 2011, with smartphones showing strongest growth, Nokia remains the number one handset manufacturer, but Samsung is now the leading smartphone hardware vendorAndroid is now the top smartphone operating system. Feature phones sales (let alone ownership) still outnumber smartphones 2:1. If your mobile strategy doesnt include feature phones, it doesnt include most of your customers. 3) Top mobile network operator for subscribers and revenues is China Mobile; for average revenue per user is 3UK; for lowest monthly churn is NTT DOCOMO Japan; and for proportion of revenues from data is Smart Philippines. But its not all good news. Mobile operators in developed countries could run out of profit in the next two to four years if they do not change their business models. All these stats in detail below PART B: Mobile Web; users; 3G coverage 1) There are now 1.2 billion mobile Web users worldwide, based on the latest stats for active mobile-broadband subscriptions worldwide; Asia is top region. 2) South Korea and Japan lead in mobile broadband penetration with 91 and 88 percent respectively. 3) Mobile devices account for 8.49 percent of global Website hits. 4) Many mobile Web users are mobile-only, i.e. they do not, or very rarely use a desktop, laptop or tablet to access the Web. Even in the US 25 percent of mobile Web users are mobile-only. Still think you dont need a mobile site? 5) The drivers of mobile Web and mobile media are: (i) Web-enabled handsets - by 2011, over 85 percent of new handsets will be able to access the mobile Web. In US and W. Europe, it is already surpassed that. Lots of new handsets support 3G (fast Internet). N.B. smartphones are only a fraction of Web-enabled phones. (ii) High-speed mobile networks - almost one in five global mobile subscribers have access to fast mobile Internet (3G or better). (iii) Unlimited data plans - Widespread availability of unlimited data plans drove mobile media in Japan, now its driving the US; but in W. Europe, lack of availability is holding up progress. All these stats in detail below PART C: Mobile marketing, advertising and messaging. 1) SMS is the king of mobile messaging 8 trillion text messages will be sent in 2011. But consumers are also embracing mobile email, IM and MMS rapidly. A2P - application to person SMS e.g. automated alerts from banks, offers from retailers, m-tickets is expected to overtake person to person SMS in 2016. Is your opt-in CRM database part of that revolution? 2) Mobile ad spend worldwide is predicted to be US$3.3 billion in 2011 sky rocketing to $20.6 billion in 2015, driven by search ads and local ads. In the US over half of U.S. mobile ad spending is local. Asia Japan particularly continues to dominate global mobile ad spend. With US$2.5 billion in annual mobile ad revenues Google is the main recipient of mobile ad spend. 3) To what types of mobile marketing do people respond best? In the UK and France opt-in SMS gets the best results, in Germany mobile Web ads get the best results. All these stats in detail below PART D: Consumer mobile behavior 1) What do consumers use their mobiles for? Japanese consumers are still more advanced in mobile behavior, using mobile Web, apps and email more, but US or Europeans text and play more games. Most popular mobile destinations are news and information, weather reports, social networking, search and maps. In all countries surveyed more consumers used their browser than apps and only a minority will use Web or apps exclusively. 2) US consumers prefer mobile browsers for banking, travel, shopping, local info, news, video, sports and blogs and prefer apps for games, social media, maps and music. 3) Mobile searches have quadrupled in the last year, for many items one in seven searches are now mobile. Did you know 71 percent of smartphone users that see TV, press or online ad, do a mobile search - will they find your mobile site or your competitors? All these stats in detail below

PART E: Mobile apps, app stores, pricing and failure rates 1) Over 300,000 mobile apps have been developed in three years. Apps have been downloaded 10.9 billion times. But demand for download mobile apps is expected to peak in 2013. 2) The most used mobile apps in the US are games; news; maps; social networking and music. Facebook, Google Maps and The Weather Channel (TWC) rule. But does reality match the hype around apps? The average download price of a mobile app is falling rapidly on all vendor app stores, except Android. And 1 in 4 mobile apps once downloaded are never used again. All these stats in detail below PART F: Mobile payment, NFC, m-commerce, m-ticketing and m-coupons 1) Paying by mobile i.e. m-payments will be worth US$240 billion in 2011 and could be over US$1 trillion by 2015. Purchasing digital goods is the largest segment ahead of physical goods, near-field communications (NFC), m-banking and money transfer. Biggest market today is Japan, but in the future could be China. 2) Japan sets the precedent for m-payment 47 million Japanese have adopted tap-and-go phones, but is expected to take off elsewhere as the world adopts NFC. In China alone, there will be 169 million users of tap-and-go payments in 2013. 3) M-commerce is predicted to reach US$119 billion in 2015, Japan remains king. Top m-commerce retailers globallyinclude: Taobao, Amazon and eBay. The US m-commerce market will be US$31 billion by 2016. 1 in 8 mobile subscribers will use m-ticketing in 2015 for airline, rail and bus travel, festivals, cinemas and sports events. All these stats in detail below PART G: Mobile financial services (MFS) and m-banking Between 500 million and 1 billion people will access financial services by mobile by 2015, depending on estimates. The MFS market will be dominated Asia, driven by mobile operator-led initiatives in developing nations to bank the unbanked.Remittance/transfers by mobile is growing three times faster than m-banking. Will MFS be mobile's killer application? All these stats in detail below

In the last twelve months, customers around the world have ordered more than US$1 billion of products from Amazon using a mobile device," Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com (July 2010).

Those statistics in more detail:

PART A: Mobile subscribers; global mobile handset and smartphone market share; worlds top five operators

1) At the end of 2011, there were 6 billion mobile subscriptions, estimates The International Telecommunication Union (2011). That is equivalent to 87 percent of the world population. And is a huge increase from 5.4 billion in 2010 and 4.7 billion mobile subscriptions in 2009. Mobile subscribers in the developed world has reached saturation point with at least one cell phone subscription per person. This means market growth is being driven by demand developing world, led by rapid mobile adoption in China and India, the world's most populous nations. These two countries collectively added 300 million new mobile subscriptions in 2010 thats more than the total mobile subscribers in the US. At the end of 2011 there were 4.5 billion mobile subscriptions in the developing world (76 percent of global subscriptions). Mobile penetration in the developing world now is 79 percent, with Africa being the lowest region worldwide at 53 percent.

Key Global Telecom Indicators for the World Telecommunication Service Sector in 2011 (all figures are estimates) Glob Develop Developi Afric Arab Asia CIS & al a ed ng Stat Pacif

Europ The e Americ

nations Mobile cellular subscriptio 5,981 1,461 ns (millions) Per 100 people Fixed telephone lines (millions) Per 100 people 86.7 %

nations

es

ic

as

4,520

433

349

2,897 399

741

969

117.8%

78.8%

53.0 96.7 % %

73.9 %

143.0 119.5 % %

103.3%

1,159 494

665

12

35

511

74

242

268

16.6 %

39.8%

11.6%

1.4% 9.7%

13.0 %

26.3 %

39.1% 28.5%

Active mobile broadband 1,186 701 subscriptio ns (millions) Per 100 people 17.0 %

484

31

48

421

42

336

286

56.5%

8.5%

3.8%

13.3 %

10.7 %

14.9 %

54.1% 30.5%

Fixed broadband subscriptio 591 ns (millions)

319

272

243

27

160

145

per 100 people

8.5% 25.7%

4.8%

0.2% 2.2% 6.2% 9.6% 25.8% 15.5%

Source: International Telecommunication Union (November 2011)

via: mobiThink ing

mobiThinking note: Mobile subscriptions outnumber fixed lines 5:1 (more so in developing nations); Mobile broadband outnumbers fixed broadband 2:1. With stats like this, it is easy to see why the experts predict that mobile Web usage will overtake PC-based Web usage. This will happen more quickly in developing nations (if it isnt happening already) where fixed Web penetration remains low. In developed nations, this will happen more slowly. IDC believes that mobile Web usage will not overtake PC Web usage in the US until 2015. Regardless of the timescale, this inevitability makes your mobile Web strategy more important than your PC Web strategy in the long term. 2) 30 percent of the worlds mobile users live in India and China. Subscribers in each country are rapidly approaching 1 billion. Both dwarf the number of subscribers in third place USA. China: 963 million subscribers (71 percent of population) in November 2011 (see table below for operator breakdown), 118 million of these are 3G users. India: 884 million subscribers (73 percent of population) in November 2011, up 154 million from November 2010. (TRAI, Jan 2012). 66 percent of mobile subscribers are urban dwellers. USA: 322.9 million subscribers (102.4 percent of population) in June 2011 (CTIA).

Mobile subscribers in China by operator November 2011 Operator China Mobile China Unicom China Telecom Total Subscribers 644 million 196 million 123 million 963 million 3G users 48 million 37 million 33 million 118 million

Sources: China Mobile; China Unicom; China Telecom via: mobiThinking

3) There were 11.1 percent more mobile devices sold in 2011 compared to 2010.

IDC (February 2012): 1,546 million handsets were sold in 2011, up 11.1 percent compared with 2010. Strategy Analytics (February 2012): 1,551.4 million handsets were sold in 2011, up 14 percent compared with 2010.

Top five mobile phone manufacturers, by 2011 global sales according to IDC Mar ket shar e 201 1 Mar ket shar e 201 0

Top three mobile phone manufacturers, by 2011 global sales according to Strategy Analytics Mar ket shar e 201 1

Shipm ents Vend 2011 or (millio ns)

Shipm ents 2010 (millio ns)

Ann ual gro wth

Shipm ents Vend 2011 or (millio ns)

Shipm ents Market 2010 share 2010 (millio ns)

Nokia 417.1

27.0 453.0 % 21.3 280.2 % 6.0 %

32.6 Nokia 417.1 % 7.9% 20.1 17.6 % % 3.4 % 96.2 % 24.5 % 30.9 % Sams 327.4 ung

26.9 453.0 % 21.1 280.2 % 6.0 %

33.3%

Samsu 329.4 ng

20.6%

Apple

93.2

47.5

Apple 93.0

47.5

3.5%

LG Electro 88.1 nics

5.7 %

116.7

8.4 %

Other 713.9 s

46.0 579.3 %

42.6%

ZTE

66.1

4.3 %

50.5

3.6 %

Others 552.1

35.7 443.6 %

31.9 24.5 % % Total 1,551.4 100 1,360.0 100%

Total

1,546

100

1,391.5 100

11.1

% Source: Strategy Analytics (Feb 2012) via:mobiTh inking

Source: IDC (Feb 2012)

3b) The top device manufacturer by market penetration (rather than sales of new handsets above and below) is Nokia in W.Europe, Samsung in the US and Sharp in Japan. Smartphone penetration in is higher in developed nations than in the rest of the world, but even here the vast majority of devices are still feature phones. These estimates are based surveys conducted by ComScore in October, November, December 2010 (Japan is December only).

Top mobile manufacturers, by market penetration, Q4 2010, according to ComScore USA Samsung 24.8% Japan Sharp 25.3% Germany Nokia 33.1% Sony Ericsson 18.2% UK Nokia 30.4% France Samsung 34.1% Spain Italy Nokia 47.4%

Nokia 47%

Panasonic 2 LG 20.9% 15.0%

Samsung 19.4%

Nokia 20.6%

Samsung 15.3%

Samsung 21.4%

Motorola 3 16.7%

Fujitsu 11.7%

Samsung 17.8%

Sony Ericsson 13.7%

Sony Ericsson 10.7%

LG 10%

LG 7.2%

Proportion of population with a smartphone, Q4 2010, according to ComScore 27% 33.6% 38.0%

Source: ComScore (February 2011) Survey group: 27,000 via: mobiThinking

4) Smartphone sales showed strong growth worldwide in 2011 IDC (February 2012): Total shipments in 2011 were 491.4 million units up 61.3 percent from 2010. This makes smartphones 31.8 percent of all handsets shipped. Strategy Analytics (February 2012): Total shipments in 2011 were 488.5 million units up 63.1 percent from 2010. This makes smartphones 31.5 percent of all handsets shipped.

Top five smartphone manufacturers, by 2011 global sales according to IDC Mar ket shar e 201 1 Mar ket shar e 201 0 7.5 %

Top three smartphone manufacturers, by 2011 global sales according to Strategy Analytics Mar ket Shipm Market shar ents share 2010 e 2010 (millions) 201 1 19.9 23.9 % 19.0 47.5 %

Shipm ents Vend 2011 or (millio ns)

Shipm ents 2010 (millio ns)

Ann ual gro wth

Shipm ents Vend 2011 or (millio ns)

Sams 94.0 ung

19.1 22.9 % 19.0 47.5 %

310. 5%

Sams 97.4 ung

8.0%

Apple 93.2

15.6 96.2 % % 32.9 22.8 % %

Apple 93.0

15.9%

Nokia 77.3

15.7 100.1 %

Nokia 77.3

15.8 100.1 %

33.4%

Resea rch In 51.1 Motio n HTC 43.5

10.4 48.8 %

16.0 Other 4.7% 220.8 % s

45.2 128 %

42.7%

8.9

21.7

7.1

100.

% Other 132.3 s 26.9 63.7 % 100. 304.7 0%

5%

20.9 107. % 7% 100. 61.3 0% % 100 %

Total 491.4

Total 488.5

299.5

100%

Source: IDC (Feb 2011)

Source: Strategy Analytics (Feb 2012)

via:mobiTh inking

mobiThinking reality check on smartphones: The media tends to overegg the importance of smartphones and Apple in particular. Before media hype lulls you into focusing your marketing/development budget on smartphones or the Apple platform exclusively, consider this: 61.3 percent of handsets sold in 2011 were not smartphones, they were feature phones; 94 percent of all phones sold were not Apple. N.B. smartphone sales is not the same as market penetration. Market penetration of smartphones will be lower. There are almost 6 billion mobile subscriptions worldwide (Source: ITU), yet only 968.2 million smartphones have been sold in total in 2009, 2010 and 2011, according to IDC i.e. only 16 percent of global mobile subscriptions. More analysis on all these numbers. 4b) Android is the top smartphone operating system in 2011. Canalys (February 2012): finds that 48.8 percent of smartphones shipped in 2011, shipped with Googles free Android OS. Canalys points out that smartphones now outsell PCs. Previously Nokia was the leader in smartphones, until its surprise decision to drop its Symbian OS in 2011.

Worldwide smartphone market, by operating system, by 2011 global sales according to Canalys Shipments 2011 Market share 2011 Annual growth (millions) 237.7 93.1 80.1 48.8% 19.1% 16.4% 244% 96% -29.1%

Operating System

Android iOS Symbian

BlackBerry Bada Windows Phone Others Total

51.4 13.2 6.8 5.4 487.7

10.5% 2.7% 1.4% 1.1% 100%

5.0% 183.1% -43.3% 14.4% 62.7% via: mobiThinking

Source: Canalys (Feb 2011)

5) Only a fraction of smartphones and tablets are protected by security software, despite a rise in the amount of malware targeted at mobile devices. Estimates for growth of mobile malware (includes viruses, worms and malicious software used by hackers, such as code inserted into compromised mobile apps) vary greatly, but all expects warn that it is growing very fast. BullGuard identified a staggering 2,500 different types of mobile malware in 2010. IBM X-Force named 2011 the year of the security breach, predicting that exploits targeting vulnerabilities that affect mobile operating systems will more than double from 2010. Yet most smartphones and tablets have little security protection: Canalys (October 2011): Only 4 percent of smartphones and tablet computers shipped in 2010 had some form of mobile security downloaded and installed. Juniper Research (August 2011): Less than 1 in 20 smartphones and tablets have third-party security software installed in them, despite a steady increase in threats. This is expected to change, let by sales to business: Canalys: US $759.8 million will be spent on security in 2011 alone, growing at 44 percent annually to be worth US $3 billion in 2015. Juniper: By 2016, 277 million mobile devices will have some kind of protection installed, costing mobile users a collective US$3.6 billion. 69 percent of this investment will be made by corporations concerned about corporate data is stored on mobile devices. Further reading: The insiders guide to mobile security Mobile security implications for your business 6) The top five mobile network operators worldwide: by number of subscribers, revenues, monthly average revenue per user (ARPU), monthly churn (i.e. loyalist customer base) and data as a percentage of total revenues, according toPortio Research:

Top five operators by different KPIs worldwide Proportion of revenues

Rank Subscribers Total

Monthly

Monthly

revenues

ARPU

churn NTT DOCOMO Japan

derived from data

China Mobile

China Mobile 3 UK

Smart Philippines

China Unicom AT&T US

Bouygues France Vodafone Ireland

KDDI Japan

Globe Philippines

Bharti Airtel India

Verizon US

SingTel Singapore

SoftBank Japan

AT&T US

NTT DOCOMO Japan

O2 Ireland

Chunghwa Taiwan

NTT DOCOMO Japan

Verizon US

Sprint US

Orange Switzerland

T-Mobile Germany

KDDI Japan

Source: Portio Research (June 2009)

via: mobiThinking

mobiThinking note on the Top fives: the most interesting thing is the predominance of Asian mobile operators coming top in both the customer loyalty and data revenues sections. Perhaps this represents different and longer-term priorities than the European networks that come top in average revenue per user. (Note: the analysis in this report is based on 2008 revenues). 7) Mobile operators in developed countries could run out of profit in the next two to four years if they do not change their business models, according to research by Tellabs/Analysys Mason (February 2011). This assumes current trends in demand for data, revenues and costs associated with investing in high speed data networks.

When mobile operators in developed economies are expected to run out of profit (if expenditure, demand and revenue trends remain the same) Worst case scenario

Region

median

Best case scenario

North America Developed Asia Pacific Western Europe

Q1, 2013 Q3, 2013 Q1, 2014

Q4, 2013 Q3, 2014 Q1, 2015

Q2, 2014 Q1, 2015 Q2, 2015 via:mobiThinking

Source: Tellabs/ Analysys Mason (February 2011)

The various use cases for consumers will depend on where they are, what time of day and what day of the week. Currently we have television with over 110 million folks. We have Weather.com on the Web which is approaching 70 million and the breakdown specific for mobile apps is fairly even between iOS and Android devices with over 20 million for each of those and then we have 33 million unique folks on the mobile Web. Scott Jensen, VP, Weather Channel (November 2011) in a video interview with mobiThinking. Find out how companies are using mobile to engage their customers in this series of video interviews withRussell Wallach, Live Nation Network Stephen Gates, Starwood Hotels Scott Jensen, Weather Channel Matt Martin, Sams Club Amy Gale, Autotrader Mobile

PART B: Mobile Web

1) There are almost 1.2 billion mobile Web users in the world. According to estimates by The ITU (2011), there are 1.2 billion active mobile-broadband subscriptions in the world. That is 17 percent of the global population. Mobile-broadband subscriptions have grown 45 percent annually over the last four years. Mobile-broadband subscription outnumber fixed broadband subscriptions 2:1. In developed countries mobile-broadband users often also have a fixed-broadband connection, but in developing countries mobile broadband is often the only access method available to people.

Active mobile broadband subscriptions by region in 2010 and 2011 (2011 figures are estimates) Asia Develop Developi Arab Glob Afric & ed ng State CIS al a Pacifi nations nations s c Active mobile 1,186 701 broadband subscriptio

The Europ America e s

484

31

48

421

42

336

286

ns 2011 (millions) Per 100 people 2011

17.0 %

56.5%

8.5%

3.8%

13.3 %

10.7 %

14.9 54.1% 30.5% %

Active mobile broadband subscriptio 870 ns 2010 (millions) Per 100 people 2010

569

301

20

36

289

31

254

224

12.6 %

46.2%

5.3%

2.5%

10.2 %

7.4%

11.2 41.3% 24.1% %

Source: International Telecommunication Union (November 2011)

via: mobiThink ing

2) South Korea and Japan are the leading countries for mobile broadband penetration. UK and US are ranked 21st and 24th, respectively, for mobile broadband penetration.

Top 10 countries by active mobile broadband subscriptions per 100 inhabitants Rank 1 2 Country Korea (Rep.) Japan Percentage 91.0 87.8 Rank 6 7 Country Hong Kong, China Portugal Percentage 74.5 72.5

3 4 5

Sweden Australia Finland

84.0 82.7 78.1

8 9 10

Luxembourg Singapore Austria

72.1 69.7 67.4

Source: ITU and Wireless Intelligence (2011)

via: mobiThinking

3) There are more mobile Internet users in China than any other country. The China Internet Network Information Center (CINIC) reports (July 2010): There are 277 million mobile Web users in China, up 43 million in six months. This amounts to 65.9 percent of total web users in China 420 million, the majority of these also access the Web via PC or laptop, but 11.7 percent of Web users exclusively use mobile to access the Web (this works out about 49 million or more than the number of people that live in Spain). If these stats are accurate, then China is on track for having mobile Internet users than there are people in the US - the worlds third largest nation. However stats from China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom (November 2011) suggest there are 118 million 3G users in China. While 3G isnt essential for mobile Web access, it is the minimum requirement for high-speed mobile browsing. For more analysis see: Why Asia will (continue to) dominate the mobile Web 4) Japan remains one of the worlds top countries for mobile Web, according to official stats. Japan has 122 million mobile subscribers (95 percent of the population) of and 101 million (84 percent of mobile users) are mobile Internet subscribers (TCA, December 2011). 99 percent of Japanese subscribers have a 3G handset (required for high-speed mobile). In November 2011 there were 3G handsets: 123 million; mobile subscribers: 124 million (Japan Statistics Bureau, December 2011) mobiThinking note: this means that 79 percent of Japanese people have access to the mobile Internet via their handset, but the number regular users could be considerably less. 5) In January 2012, 8.49 percent of Website hits/pageviews come from a handheld mobile device, according toStatCounter. Growth in mobile Web penetration is strongest in Asia and Africa, where PC penetration is lower. The worldwide leader for mobile pageviews by a considerable margin is Nokias Symbian operating system, with 31.89 percent, due to its dominance of mobile phone shipments, particularly in Asia.

Proportion of global Web pageviews from mobile devices, by region, in Jan 2011 and Jan 2012 North South Oceana America America

Global Africa

Asia

Europe

Mobile 8.49% pageviews in

19.17% 14.32% 4.22%

8.03%

7.75%

2.88%

Jan 2012 Mobile pageviews in 4.3% Jan 2011

6.33%

6.06%

2.17%

5.78%

3.69%

1.88%

Top mobile operating system for pageviews, by region, in Jan 2012 Symbian Symbian Symbian iOS 31.89% 70.94% 55.42% 41.19% iOS Samsung Android Android 24.04% 7.23% 13.43% 30.89% Android Android 23.21% 3.79 iOS 44.29% Android 38.63% iOS 70.62% Android 20.84% Symbian 33.73% Android 26.93%

Samsung BlackBerry BlackBerry Symbian iOS 10.53% 12.85% 7.52% 3.93% 11.39% via: mobiThinking

Source: StatCounter (February 2012)

N.B. The above data is pageviews, mobile visitors could be higher because the average mobile visitor surfs less than the average PC visitors. More analysis here. 6) The percentage of people regularly accessing the mobile Web in Japan and urban China is more than double the US according to surveys by Forrester (June 2011)

Percentage of mobile subscribers accessing mobile Web at least monthly Country Japan Urban China Percentage 47% 43% Country Hong Kong (China) Europe Percentage 16% 12%

United States

22%

Urban India via: mobiThinking

8%

Source: Forrester (June 2011)

7) Many mobile Web users are mobile-only, i.e. they do not, or very rarely also use a desktop, laptop or tablet to access the Web, according to On Device Research. In many developing nations, the majority of mobile Web users are mobile-only, highest include Egypt at 70 percent and India at 59 percent. In many developing nations, the mobile-only tend to be under 25. In developed nations, including the US at 25 percent, a large minority of mobile Web users are mobile-only. In developed nations, in the US particularly, many mobile-only are older people and many come from lower income households In Africa the 85 percent of the mobile-only Web users access the Web with a feature phone. In Africa the top mobile activities for mobile-only users are: downloading games (55 percent); downloading music (54 percent); social networking (52 percent); search (48 percent); email (46 percent). Many mobile-only Web users do not have a bank account, in India this is 57 percent of the mobile-only. mobiThinking note: The best thing about these stats is that they are generated by m-research. On Device Research has recruited panelists of 1,000+ panelists in each target country that answer questions on mobile via the mobile Web. Find out more: Using mobile Web-based research to deliver insights into the mobile-only generation. Also see this: Guide to m-research.

Percentage of mobile Web users who never or infrequently use the desktop Web Percentage mobile-only 70% 59% 57% 55% 54% 50% Percentage mobile-only 44% 32% 30% 25% 22% 19%

Country

Country

Egypt India South Africa Ghana Kenya Nigeria

Indonesia Thailand China US UK Russia

Source: On Device Research (December 2010)

Survey group:15,204

via: mobiThinking

8) In 2011 over 85 percent of new handsets will be able to access the mobile Web. Today in US and Western Europe, 90 percent of mobile subscribers have an Internet-ready phone. Gartner (March 2010) predicts that in 2011, over 85 percent of handsets shipped globally will include some form of browser. In mature markets, such as Western Europe and Japan, approximately 60 percent of handsets shipped will be smartphones with sophisticated browsing capabilities. In mature markets, the mobile Web, along with associated Web adaptation tools, will be a leading technology for business to consumer (B2C) mobile applications through 2012, and should be part of every organization's B2C technology portfolio. comScore (February 2011) estimates that 90 percent of mobile subscribers in US and Western Europe have a phone that can access the mobile Web. 48 percent of US and 61 percent of W. Europeans have a handset with an HTML browsers (this proportion is increasing fast), the rest have WAP browsers. ComScore notes that there are more than 60 different types/versions of mobile browser in use on mobile handsets. This makes mobile Web design more complicated than desktop Web design. dotMobi (July 2011) mobiThinkings parent company estimates that there are 6,500 distinct Web-capable mobile devices models out there thats ignoring devices that only vary in color or phones that have be renamed/relabeled by operators etc. The majority of these are not smartphones. The specifications/features of these devices vary massively, screen sizes particularly. ABI Research (July 2011) predicts that 2.1 billion mobile devices will have HTML5 browsers by 2016 (up from 109 million in 2010). HTML5 will help to deliver a richer, more interactive mobile Web experience, including being able to play video without needing a plug such as the Adobe Flash Player. mobiThinking note on smartphones and HTML browsers: just because people may be able to view your PC Website with a mobile device with an HTML browser, doesnt mean it is a pleasant or fulfilling experience. However big the devices screen is, viewing a PC Website requires scrolling left and right and up and down. Dont forget that most web-enabled phones are not smartphones and have much smaller screens. However good the mobile connection, large images will be slow to load. Many technologies commonly used on PC sites, such as Flash, do not work, or work well, on many handsets, including Apple. Whats more, mobile users have different requirements from desktop Web users and provide different opportunities for your business. For more on HTML5 see these video interviews: Why HTML5 changes everything Dimitrios Kontarinis, VP of innovation, Velti and Meeting the needs of mobile customers with mobile Web/HTML5 Stephen Gates, Starwood Hotels For more on why your site needs to identify and react to mobile visitors see this Guide to device detection. 9) 45 percent of the worlds population is now covered by a 3G mobile network (required for fast mobile Internet access), according to The ITU (2011). 3G networks are now been launched in 159 countries. Some countries such as Sweden, Norway, Ukraine and United States are already moving to 4G. 10) Top regions and countries for penetration of 3G handsets according to Informa and Ovum via Morgan Stanley:

Top regions for penetration of 3G handsets according to Ovum Region 2009 2014

Top 10 countries for penetration of 3G handsets according to Informa Country %

Western Europe North America Eastern Europe AsiaPac (without Japan) Japan Middle East & Africa South & Central America

39% 38% 9%

92% 74% 40%

Japan South Korea Australia

90% 75% 56%

7%

37%

Singapore

44%

91% 7%

100% 35%

Israel Spain

46% 41%

4%

17%

USA

41%

Sweden Austria Portugal Italy Global 15% 43% Global

40% 40% 35% 34% 12%

Source: Morgan Stanley (April 2010)

Morgan Stanley

via: mobiThinking

mobiThinking note on 3G: Morgan Stanley states that "3G is key to success of mobile Internet"; however while Japan (king of the mobile Web) appears to be testimony to this conclusion, China claims to have the highest mobile Internet usage in the world despite low 3G handset penetration. 11) More widespread availability of unlimited data plans has helped the US overtake and extend its lead in mobile media use (mobile Web, apps, content downloads etc) over Western Europe. ComScore finds that where there are now 29 percent of US subscribers have unlimited plans, there are only 8 percent in the EU5 (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain). ComScore does not provide comparable data for Japan, where mobile media penetration is 75 percent dwarfing both the US and EU5. But Infinita estimates that 75 percent of Japanese are on unlimited plans (it was first introduced in 2004), while over 95 percent have 3G handsets. In this Guide to Japan, Infinita states that penetration of unlimited data is the main reason mobile Web in Japan is so advanced.

Mobile Market Enablers in the U.S and W. Europe, Q4 2010, according to ComScore 3G/4G handset ownership 50% 47.1%

Country

Unlimited data plans

Smartphone penetration

Mobile media usage

US

29%

27% 31.1%

47% 37% 75%

W.Europe (EU5) 8% Japan Source: ComScore (February 2011)

Survey group: 27,000

via: mobiThinking

We're also seeing a huge positive revenue impact from Mobile, which has grown 2.5 times in the last 12 months to a run rate of over $2.5 billion. Larry Page, CEO, Google. Let's turn to mobile advertising. Larry mentioned $2.5 billion as a run rate. Our revenue growth continues to accelerate even in Mobile, driven primarily by mobile search Many advertisers have greatly increased the size and frequency of their mobile campaigns. Mobile is becoming a must-have. This includes clients like InterContinental Hotels Group, which spans pretty much across our entire portfolio of properties, including Mobile search, Mobile GDN and AdMob. Nikesh Arora, SVP, Google. Q3 2011 Earnings Call October, 2011 There are 200 million mobile video playbacks every day on YouTube YouTube internal data.

Brush up on your mobile Web and mobile marketing skills at one of these conferences. mobiThinking has negotiated great discounts and free tickets to give away: January: Mobile Commerce Mexico and Central America (Mexico City) 3rd Mobile Commerce Conference (San Francisco, USA) February: M-Days (Frankfurt, Germany) Mobile LATAM (Miami, USA) March: The Mobile Marketing Conference (Miami, USA) The BLN Making it Mobile

Forum (London, UK) 4G Device World Summit (Seoul, South Korea) April: Mobile Payments & NFC Asia 2011 (Hong Kong) MMA Forum Asia (Singapore). Need a regular fix of mobile stats? Follow us on Twitter for updates: @mobithinking

PART C: Mobile marketing, advertising and messaging

1) SMS is the king of mobile messaging. Portio Research (January 2011): 6.9 SMS trillion messages were sent in 2010. SMS traffic is expected to break 8 trillion in 2011. 249 billion MMS were sent, in 2010. 480.6 million users of mobile email in 2010, expected to quadruple by 2015. 311.2 million users of mobile instant messaging (IM) in 2010, expected to grow to 1.6 trillion by 2015. Portio says: Messaging is still king. We want to be absolutely clear about this. Messaging still dominates [mobile operators] non-voice revenues worldwide. Worldwide mobile messaging market will be worth over US$200 billion in 2011 (SMS is $127 billion of this), reaching $334.7 billion by 2015. Juniper Research (May 2011): By 2016, application-to-person (A2P) messaging will overtake person-to-person (texting) messaging, being worth more than US$70bn. A2P messaging includes messages to or from an application to or from a large number of customers in financial services, advertising, marketing, business administration, ticketing, television voting etc. Juniper Research (June 2011): Mobile IM users will exceed 1.3 billion by 2016. While IM services have some advantages, such as real-time communication and apparent absence of cost, the market is fragmented by different services [AOLs AIM, Blackberry Messenger, Microsofts Windows Live, Skype and Yahoo! Messenger] which cannot communicate with each other. 2) Expenditure on mobile advertising and marketing worldwide: Gartner predicts mobile ad revenue will be US$3.3 billion in 2011. This will sky rocket to $20.6 billion in 2015, more than doubling each year. It will continue to grow thereafter. Search ads and location ads (paid-for positioning on maps and augmented reality apps) will deliver the highest revenue, while video/audio ads will see the fastest growth through 2015. Brand spending on mobile advertising will grow from 0.5 percent of the total advertising budget in 2010 to over 4 percent in 2015. Asia will continue to dominate global mobile ad spend, but to a lessening degree from 49.2 percent of mobile ad revenue in 2011 to 33.6 percent in 2015. See: Q&A with Gartner for implications. See: What makes Asia Pacific the most exciting mobile market in the world? Interview with Rohit Dadwal, MD Asia Pacific, MMA.

Mobile Advertising Revenue by Region, Worldwide, 2010-2015 (Millions of Dollars), according to Gartner Region North America Western Europe Asia/Pacific and Japan 2010 304.3 257.1 868.8 2011 701.7 569.3 1,628.5 2015 5,791.4 5,131.9 6,925.0

Rest of the World Total Source: Gartner (June 2011)

196.9 1,627.1

410.4 3,309.9

2,761.7 20,610.0

via: mobiThinking

Strategy Analytics (March 2010): Global expenditure on mobile advertising (defined as placing an advert within a variety of mobile media formats including mobile Internet, games and applications, mobile video, mobile TV, streaming music, text and media alerts) is estimated at US$3.6 billion in 2009, growing to US$38 billion in 2015. ABI Research (May 2009): Global expenditure on mobile marketing and advertising in 2009 was $7.5 billion, forecasted to be $11.5 billion in 2010, $16.3 billion in 2011 and $21.2 billion in 2012. Juniper Research (August 2009): Total advertising expenditure on mobile is expected to rise from just over US$1.4bn in 2009 to US$6 billion n in 2014. Of this, ad spend on mobile Internet was estimated to be US$500 million in 2009. The report also pointed out that: Where fixed Internet access is limited, mobile is the dominant means of accessing the Internet: in India, mobile accounted for nearly 90 percent of all Internet users in 2008. Brands can build up much more detailed profiles of user responses compared to online and plan follow-up campaigns accordingly. 3) Japan rules the roost when it comes to mobile advertising, based on its highly developed mobile Web. Mobile marketing and advertising expenditures in Japan in 2009 was 103.1 billion Yen, that's US$1.14 billion (according to Dentsu). Year-on-year growth was 12.9 percent. There are lots more juicy stats in this Guide to mobile in Japan 4) More than half of U.S. mobile ad spending is local. BIA/Kelsey (June 2011): U.S. mobile ad spending will grow from US$790 million in 2010 to $4 billion in 2015. Local ad spend will grow from US$404 million to $2.8 billion. This makes locally targeted mobile ads 51 percent of overall U.S. mobile ad spending, growing to 70 percent by 2015. Mobile local advertising includes ads that target users in specific locations or contain location-specific calls to action. Among the drivers of mobile ad revenue growth are smartphone penetration, mobile Web usage and related increases in ad inventory. BIA/Kelsey expects large brand advertisers to evolve their campaign objectives to the capabilities of the mobile device most notably, location awareness. emarketer.com (October 2010): US expenditure on mobile advertising and marketing is estimated to be US$416 million in 2009; $743 million in 2010 and will be $1,102 in 2011. In 2010 mobile ad formats were dominated by messaging ($327 million), but display ($202 million) and search ($185 million) will catch up in 2012. Video lags at ($28 million). 5) The top mobile ad networks in the US are Google, Millennial Media, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Jumptap, estimates IDC (December 2011). Based on its calculations of network revenues, IDC estimates that expenditure on mobile ad expenditure in US was $2.1 billion in 2011 (which is higher than other estimates). 70 percent of mobile ad budgets are spent on search advertising, with 30 percent spent on mobile display adverting. Google takes the lions share of combined search and display revenue with 70 percent market share. no other network taking more than 5 percent. The next biggest mobile ad networks are, in order, Millennial Media, Apple, Yahoo!, Microsoft and Jumptap. mobiThinking note: Ad networks remain very cagy on their revenues. When Millennial Media announced its IPO it revealed its revenues and the extent of its losses for the first time. This has made it difficult for analysts and pundits to gauge which ad network is biggest though who says that biggest is best? Further reading: Analysis of IDCs stats Implications of Millennial Medias IPO Guide to mobile ad networks(with in-depth profiles of Millennial, Microsoft, Jumptap and many other networks). 6) Googles gross annual revenue from mobile advertising is over US$2.5 billion per year, according to Googles Q3 2011 earnings call (October 2011). Mobile search advertising rather than display advertising is the main contributor. In 2010, Google declared its annual mobile ad revenue to be US$1 billion. Gartner, estimates that Googles US$1 billion would give it 70 percent of the global mobile ad market. 7) How many people see and react to mobile ads? According to consumer research by The MMA and Lightspeed Research (October 2010), in UK, France and Germany, 45 percent of consumers (especially younger people) noticed

mobile advertising and of these, 29 percent responded to it. Of those that responded to the ads, in Germany 49 percent, UK 47 percent and in France 22 percent went on to make a purchase. The most effective form of ads was opt-in SMS in the UK (40 percent said they were more likely to respond to these) and in France (21 percent); while in Germany it was mobile Web ads (27 percent). Time sensitive special offers or discounts (especially m-coupons) were most likely to lead to purchase. People were most likely to purchase mobile content such as applications, music and games. 8) Why advertisers need a mobile-friendly site according Google/Ipsos (US consumer Mobile Movement survey April 2011) Of people who react to seeing a mobile ad: 42 percent click on the mobile ad; 35 percent visit the advertisers site; 32 percent search for more information on their phone; 49 percent make a purchase and 27 percent call the business. 71 percent of smartphone users that see TV, press or online ad, do a mobile search for more information. But 79 percent of large online advertisers still do not have a mobile optimized site, according to Google/Kelsey 2010.

The mobiThinking guide to mobile industry awards

Draw inspiration from award-winning mobile sites, apps and campaigns, from mobiThinkings library of over 75 video case studies from Global Mobile Awards MMA Awards Cannes Lions EMMAs; Mobi Awards WSA Awards and more. Keep your finger on the pulse. Well let you know when we add new statistics via Twitter. Follow us for updates: @mobithinking

PART D: Consumer mobile behavior

1) What do consumers use their mobiles for? According to ComScore's excellent 2010 Mobile Year in Review(February 2011) Japanese consumers are still much more advanced in their mobile usage, with 55.4 percent accessing the mobile Web and 57.1 percent using email, but US and European consumers are catching on fast. Even in developed nations (where smartphone penetration is higher), more people use mobile Web than mobile apps. Very few use either mobile apps or mobile Web exclusively. Only 6 percent of app users in the US and 7 percent in Europe dont use their browser. While 8 percent of browser users in the US and Europe dont use apps. Even though applications received much more attention by the media throughout 2010, our analysis in the US and the EU5 region showed that by a small margin, application usage is still second to browser usage when it comes to the mobile web Further analysis of browser use and application access shows that the two activities are not mutually exclusive Instead of the browser vs. app question being an either or proposition, the mobile web audience has quickly come to expect and utilize both browsing and apps as an integral parts of the mobile web experience. ComScore (February 2011).

Mobile behavior in United States, EU5 (UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy) and Japan October, November, December 2010 Percent of total mobile audience (Age 13+)

United States Used connected media (browser, app or download)

Europe

Japan

46.7%

41.1%

76.8%

Used browser Used application Used messaging Sent text message Instant messaging Email

36.4% 34.4%

28.8% 28.0%

55.4% 53.3%

68.0% 17.2% 30.5%

82.7% 14.2% 22.2%

41.6% 3.6% 57.1%

Accessed entertainment/social media Took photos Social networking or blog Played games Recorded video Listened to music Watched TV and/or video 52.4% 24.7% 23.2% 20.2% 15.7% 5.6% 57.5% 18.0% 25.3% 26.1% 25.0% 5.7% 62.9% 19.3% 16.3% 15.8% 12.9% 22.8%

Accessed financial services

Bank accounts Financial news or stock quotes

11.4%

8.0%

7.0%

10.2%

8.0%

16.5%

Accessed news, sports, weather, search, retail, travel, reference News and information Weather reports Search Maps Sports news Restaurant info Traffic reports Classifieds Retail site Travel service 39.5% 25.2% 21.4% 17.8% 15.8% 10.0% 8.4% 7.3% 6.5% 4.4% 32.2% 16.4% 14.9% 13.0% 12.0% 6.5% 7.4% 4.8% 5.2% 4.6% 57.6% 34.7% 31.5% 17.1% 18.2% 9.7% 14.0% 3.6% 8.5% 2.9%

Source: comScore MobiLens (Feb 2011)

via: mobiThinking

 Read the insiders guides to mobile in: Japan; France; Germany; USA; UK; Spain. 2) US consumers prefer browser to apps for most mobile activities, according to Keynote/Adobe (survey of 1,200 U.S. consumers, mostly smartphone users, October 2010) Accessing maps and directions is the no. 1 mobile activity, followed by social networking, accessing local information and reading news. Respondents generally favor the browser experience over downloadable mobile apps, except when it comes to games, social media, maps and music. Consumers report equal satisfaction levels with their browser and app experiences, and spend nearly equal amounts of time interacting with each. To maximize reach, invest in a mobile-optimized web experience and look beyond a single device. Adobe/Keynote.

US consumers favorite mobile activities and preferences for accessing the activity via app or browser Category Media and Entertainment: Social networking Local info News Music Games Video Sports Blogs/blogging 76% 73% 68% 63% 61% 56% 42% 41% 54% 46% 37% 55% 61% 42% 33% 25% 46% 54% 63% 45% 39% 58% 67% 75% Participated Prefer apps Prefer browser

Product reviews Travel and mapping: Maps/directions Research travel Check travel reviews Check travel itinerary Banking and finance: Check bank account Conduct bank transactions Budgeting Shopping:

34%

22%

78%

81% 47% 43% 39%

52% 25% 23% 32%

48% 75% 77% 68%

67% 51% 43%

42% 39% 44%

58% 61% 56%

For every shopping activity, including researching products and prices, reviews, promotions and purchasing products, most respondents (61-81%) preferred browser to native app. Source: Keynote/Adobe (October 2010) via: mobiThinking

mobiThinking note on mobile Web v mobile apps: both the results of the ComScore and the Keynote/Adobe research makes a mockery of the people who claimed the download app would kill the mobile Web. Despite all the media hype and unfathomable amounts of money invested in developing and promoting apps for proprietary

handsets, mobile consumers still use and prefer the mobile Web to mobile apps and they always will. But many users prefer mobile apps for certain activities particularly those that they use frequently and where they are loyal to one provider e.g. mapping and social networking. Thats why mobiThinking also has little time for the equally nave counter argument that the mobile Web will kill the native app. For more on mobile apps see: Native v Web apps Do mobile apps deliver ROI?. 3) In China, the most popular activity is mobile IM, followed by search. CINIC (July 2010) reports that the most popular activities in China (which its own data suggests is the worlds largest mobile Web community) are: instant messaging (62 percent); search (48 percent); web music (45 percent); web literature (43 percent); social networking 36 percent; games (21 percent); video (20 percent); email (16 percent); and m-commerce (6 percent). For more mobile in China see this video: What marketers need to know about mobile in China Jia Zheng, AKQA 4) Mobile searches have quadrupled in the last year, according to Google, for many items one in seven searches are now mobile. 1 in 3 mobile searches are local. After looking up a local business on their smartphone, 61 percent of users called the business and 59 percent visited. 79 percent of smartphone users use their smartphones to help with shopping 71 percent of smartphone users that see TV, press or online ad, do a mobile search for more information, but 79 percent of large online advertisers still do not have a mobile optimized site. It is true across the board. Roughly one in seven searches, even in the smaller categories, are happening on a mobile phone, but how many of you are putting one seventh of your resources into mobile anyone who hasnt got mobile only business? Your customer is trying to engage you it would be like not doing business with your customers on Thursdays. Jason Spero, Google (Feb 2011).

Percentage of searches that are via a mobile device Proportion of searches that are mobile 29.6% 16.8% 15.5% 15.4%; 14.9%

Category

Restaurants Automotive Consumer electronics Finance and insurance Beauty and personal

Source: Internal Google Data (February 2011) via: mobiThinking

Whether to have a mobile site or a mobile app and which to develop first depends on what kind of product you have. If most people are going to find you through search then you should optimize your site for mobile Web, but if you think you have a big enough fan base and you can cut through the clutter of getting people to download your app, then you can have a more immersive experience by creating an app. Chet Fenster, MEC Entertainment (November 2011). Get your mobile strategy onto the right track with this series of video interviews with the experts from the top creative, interactive and mobile agencies (filmed September-November 2011): Chet Fenster, MEC Mike Yonker, Rockfish ILICCO ELIA, LBi Russ Lidstone, Euro RSCG Phillip Clement, Bemoko Christian Louca, YOC

Part E: Mobile apps

1) In three years over 300,000 mobile apps have been developed IDC (December 2010): In 2010 these 300,000+ applications were downloaded 10.9 billion times. IDC predicts that global downloads will reach 76.9 billion in 2014 and will be worth US$35 billion. ABI Research (October 2011): Predicts that there will be 29 billion apps downloaded in 2011, up from 9 billion in 2010. In Q2 Android overtook Apple in terms of app downloads with 44 percent of downloads, compared to Apples 31 percent. Canalys (June 2011): Predicts that direct revenue from the sale of apps, in-app purchases and subscriptions across smartphones and tablets will be $7.3 billion in 2011 rising to $36.7 billion by 2015. Canalys expects MNOs to take more of a share of app revenues, exploiting their relationships with the customer and the serious problem of application discovery for both developers and users in the overcrowded vendor app stores. 2) Demand for app stores is expected to peak in 2013. ABI Research (May 2010) predicts that app stores will slowly decline as subscribers migrate from download apps to mobile Web sites and more popular download apps, such as social networking, are preloaded on mobile devices. 3) The average price of a mobile app is falling rapidly on all vendor app stores, except Android. The Distimo report (January 2011) finds that in December the average the cost of downloading an app was considerably cheaper than it was in January 2010. Distimo makes analytics tools for mobile apps.

Change in price of a download app over 12 months, 2010 according to Distimo App store Number of apps Price change All apps Apple 300,000 -12 Blackberry Ovi (Nokia) Android 18,000 -24 130,000 +1 25,000 -29

Top 100 apps

-19

-24

-9

-61

Source: The Distimo report (January 2011)

via: mobiThinking

4) One in four mobile apps once downloaded is never used again. A study by Localytics (January 2010) found that many apps are downloaded, tried once and then discarded. Tracking downloads is often a first step to gauging an apps success, but download stats often provide an incomplete and inflated view. High download numbers always feel great, but if those customers never open the app or abandon it after just a few uses, those high download numbers are really part of a high churn rate. Localytics study (Localytics makes analytics tools for mobile apps).

Number of apps downloaded and used just once according to Localytics January-March April-June July-September October2010 2010 2010 December 2010

Quarter

Proportion of apps used only once

22%

26%

26%

26%

Source: Localytics (January 2011)

via: mobiThinking

mobiThinking note on mobile apps: some app stores, including the largest, Apple, keep download stats for individual apps a secret, which saves the publishers from embarrassment. Thus you will only hear download figures for the more successful apps, but while these sound impressive, they dont mean much without the retention rate i.e. how many people are still using the app a week, month, or year later. 5) The most used apps across all smartphones note thats used as opposed to downloaded in the US according to Nielsen (June 2010), are Facebook, Google Maps and The Weather Channel (TWC). The most popular categories are games; news; maps; social networking and music. On average US feature-phone users have 10 apps on board and smartphone users have 22 apps (of which iPhone users have the most with 37). The Facebook App has been downloaded 100 million times from the independent app store GetJar, according to GetJar (December 2010) (making this the most downloaded app from any app store). mobiThinking says: the irony is that this is not a download app its a short cut to the Facebook mobile site Facebook is a Web app, available for anyone with any Web-enabled handset. For more on mobile apps see: Its all about the design Native v Web apps Do mobile apps deliver ROI? Q&A with GetJar.

Searching for the right mobile agency or mobile ad network? mobiThinking guide to mobile agencies mobiThinking guide to mobile ad networks We update our stats regularly. Follow us on Twitter for updates: @mobithinking

Part F: Mobile payment, including m-commerce, near-field communications/contactless payments, mticketing and m-coupons.
1) Worldwide mobile payments (m-payments) are growing strongly, but will still only be worth a fraction of ecommerce payments: N.B. definitions of m-payments may vary. Gartner (July 2011): there will be 141.1 million m-payment users in 2011 (up 38.2 percent from 2010), m-payments will total US $86.1 billion in 2011 (up 75.9 percent from 2010). This reduces previous forecasts. Money transfers and prepaid top-ups account for most of m-payments in developing markets. Merchandise purchases (e.g. via Amazon, eBay and Apple App Store) account for most of m-payments in developed markets. NFC is being overhyped and will not be mainstream for at least four years. SMS and USSD will continue to dominate payments in developing markets and WAP payments will dominate in developed world. Yankee Group (June 2011): Global mobile transactions predicted to be US$241 billion in 2011 growing to more than $1 Trillion by 2015. EMEA is the mobile money hot spot, says Yankee, accounting for 41 percent of mobile transactions value in 2011, compared to 35 percent in North America, 22 percent in Asia-Pacific and just 1 percent in Latin America. Portio Research (March 2010): There were 81.3 million people worldwide using their mobile device to make payments (including in-app payments, mobile ticketing and mobile coupons) in 2009. By the end of 2014, this is forecasted to rise to nearly 490 million (8 percent of mobile subscribers). The volume of m-payments i.e. face value of purchases and transactions was US$68.7 billion in 2009, rising to US$633.4 billion by end-2014. Juniper Research (July 2011 ): Total value of mobile payments for digital and physical goods, money transfers and NFC (Near Field Communications) transactions will reach $670bn by 2015, up from $240bn this year. Estimates include mobile ticketing, NFC contactless payments, physical goods purchases and money transfers. Active mobile money users will double by 2013. Digital goods is the largest segment and will account for nearly 40% of the market in 2015. Juniper Research (June 2011): 1.8 billion consumers globally will buy digital goods via their mobile in 2011, this will rise to 2.5 billion in 2015. For example, in 2015, more than 400 million people on the Indian Sub-Continent will purchase digital goods via mobile. But IDC (May 2010) believes that in EMEA, m-payments will take off slower than m-banking, forecasting that less than 13 percent of mobile subscribers will be registered to use m-payments and volume of m-payments will be no more than $125 billion. Thus m-payments will take off slower than many industry observers hope, due to the complexity and set-up costs for retailers. However, strong growth in m-banking will lay the foundations for growth in mobile payments. 2) While the rest of the world trial/dream of payment by mobile, in Japan it is already a way of life. ComScore (February 2011) research indicates that in December 2010 alone, 9.8 million or 10 percent of Japanese mobile subscribers used their mobile wallet to make a purchase. 7.6 million consumers made a purchase in a retail/convenience store; 3.2 million purchased from a vending machine; 2.7 million paid for public transport; 2.6 million purchased in a grocery stores; and 1.5 million paid a restaurant bill all using their mobile phone, instead of cash, card or check. 47 million Japanese have adopted tap-and-go phones in three years this is one of the fastest roll outs of electronic products in human history. East Asians will continue lead this market because governments and industry stop inter-industry haggling enabling projects that benefit the nation go ahead. (IDTechEx (R&M), Feb 2011). 3) But tap-and-go m-payments will take off elsewhere as the world adopts near-field communications and more NFC-enabled phones hit the market: Juniper Research (June 2011): Global NFC m-payment transactions will be almost US$50 billion worldwide by 2014. 20 countries are expected to launch NFC services in the next 18 months. Yankee Group (June 2011): There will be 7 million NFC-enabled phones in 2011 growing to 203 million in 2015. Juniper Research (April 2011): Almost 300 million or 1 in 5 or smartphones worldwide will be NFC-enabled by 2014. IE Market Research (July 2010): NFC will be 32.8 percent of global m-payments transactions estimated at US$1.13 trillion in 2014. Volume shipments of NFC phones are expected in Western Europe and North America in 2011. Frost & Sullivan (February 2011): 863 million units or 53 percent of new handsets will be NFC-enabled in 2015. The total payment value for NFC globally will exceed 110 billion in 2015. Celent (November 2010): There will be 169 million users of mobile contactless payment in China in 2013. Total

number of m-payment users will be 410 million, making China the largest m-payments market in the world. NFC Chip Makers predict there will be at least 40-50 million NFC phones on the market by 2011, based on orders for NFC chip sets (NFC Times, Oct, 2010). mobiThinking note on NFC: recent announcements from everyone from Google to Vodafone has created a media frenzy around NFC. The fact is that seven years after the foundation of the NFC forum there are almost no NFC phones on the market. NFC more than any other technology requires close cooperation of all parties this was the secret of success of FeliCa in Japan (which isnt NFC, but the model is similar). Find out more: The essential ingredients for the success of NFC 4) Shopping on the mobile Web, i.e. m-commerce will reach US$119 billion in 2015, predicts ABI Research(February 2010), thats about 8 percent of the total e-commerce market: Today, Japan is king of m-commerce, where mobile Web shopping exceeded US$10 billion in 2009, making the US$1.2 billion bought in the US by mobile look trifling. For more insight on Japan, see this: guide to mobile in Japan M-commerce in Europe is expected to outpace the US by the end of 2010. Long-term growth in m-commerce will come from developing nations where mobile is virtually the only way to access the Internet. 5) In the US, m-commerce revenues are expected to hit $6 billion by the end of 2011, growing to $31 billion by 2016, according to Forrester Research (June 2011). But m-commerce will only be 2 percent of e-commerce in 2011 and 7 percent of e-commerce in 2016. m-commerce includes mobile media and content, retail, travel, coupons/deals, and services 91 percent of online retailers in the US have a mobile strategy in place or in development, according toShop.org/Forrester Research (May 2011) 48 percent of US retailers surveyed had a mobile-optimized website; 35 percent had deployed an iPhone app; 15 percent deployed an Android app; 15 percent had deployed an iPad app. 6) Four out of five US smartphone owners, use phone to help with shopping, according to Google/Ipsos (April 2011). A survey of 5013 US smartphone owners found: 79 percent use a smartphone to help with shopping and 70 percent use phone in store. Of those: 54 percent located a retailer; 49 percent compare prices to help decide; 34 percent search in-store inventory; 44 percent read reviews and product info; 46 percent called a retailer; 40 percent looked for promotions and discounts; 28 percent used a discount coupon on phone. 74 percent of smartphone shoppers have made purchase following research on phone. Of those: 76 percent purchased in store; 59 percent purchased on their PCs; 35 percent purchased on their smartphones; 27 percent purchased via a mobile site; 22 percent purchased through a mobile app. The average annual spend on mobile purchases was US$300. 7) Top m-commerce retailers: In 2009, the top m-commerce retailer according to Altimeter Group (June 2010) was Taobao, (part of Chinese Web giant Alibaba Group) with an estimated $800 million in revenues. In the last twelve months, customers around the world have ordered more than US$1 billion of products from Amazon using a mobile device," according to Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com (July 2010). On eBay, in 2011, people purchased $5 billion of goods using their mobile. In 2012, eBay projects this will rise to $8 billion. (eBay, January 2012). PayPal expects to see $7 billion in mobile payment volume in 2012. (PayPal, January 2012). mobiThinking note on eBay and Paypal: The eBay figure is gross merchandise volume (GMV), which is the amount of goods bought and sold in the market place, rather than actual revenue made by eBay, which takes a percentage of sales over its platform. PayPal, is an online payment system, owned by eBay. eBay encourages its customers to use PayPal, thus there could be considerable overlap between the eBay and the PayPal figures. 8) 1 in 8 mobile subscribers will use m-ticketing in 2015 for airline, rail and bus travel, festivals, cinemas and sports events. Jupiter Research (March 2011): By 2015, over 750 million users will either have a ticket delivered to their mobile phone or buy a ticket with their phone, compared to 230 million today. Ticket delivery will be by SMS, bar codes, mobile web, smartphone apps or NFC. Jupiter Research (April 2011): 500 million people worldwide to use their mobiles as metro and bus tickets by 2015. This is over five times growth from 2010. Outside Japan (which uses contactless payments, similar to NFC) systems in operation typically use SMS or bar codes, as are currently used in Stockholm and Prague. NFC-based systems will start to take off from 2013. Jupiter Research (March 2011): In 2010, airlines issued 160 million mobile boarding passes. By 2013, this will be

480 million or one in seven boarding passes. Today 30 airlines offer mobile boarding passes, half of these also offer mobile ticket booking and purchasing. 9) M-coupons will dominate mobile retail marketing spend until 2013, according to Juniper Research (March 2010): Mobile retail will exceed US$12 billion by 2014 (mobile retail is defined as m-coupon redemption values, smart poster fees and advertising expenditure). The mobile retail sector would initially be dominated by coupons, but mobile advertising expenditure will exceed coupon redemption values by 2013 - The m-coupon service of McDonalds Japan is used by 4.5 million users, according to Infinita (March 2010). - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) (October 2010) plans to use m-vouchers to deliver food aid to 40,000 Iraqi refugees in Syria by the end of 2010.

"Mobile handsets are in an excellent position to become the primary digital channel for providers of banking and related financial services in emerging markets Berg Insight.

Part G: Mobile financial services, including m-banking and money transfers

1) Mobile financial services (MFS) (m-banking, m-wallets, remittance/transfers etc) are growing fast: Yankee Group (June 2011) predicts that there will be 500 million m-banking users globally by 2015. Currently, 27 percent of all survey respondents use mobile banking--far more than use m-commerce (13 percent), mobile coupons (11 percent) and mobile payments (9 percent). Berg Insight (April 2010) estimates that users of m-banking and related services (including money transfers) doubled between 2008 and 2009 to 55 million and will double again in 2010. In 2015 there will be 894 million users globally. Growth is being driven by efforts by operators and banks in developing countries (particularly in Asia) to bank the unbanked. Global Industry Analysts (GIA) (February 2010) predicts the global customer base for m-banking will reach 1.1 billion by the year 2015. ABI Research (January 2009) forecasts that in 2013, there will be nearly half a billion customers of MFS, including m-banking, mobile domestic person-to-person payments (i.e. money transfers) and international person-to-person payments. 2) Asia will be the key market for MFS, driven by initiatives to bank the unbanked and money transfers: Berg Insight: More than half of global MFS customers will be in Asia Pacific Middle East and Africa is also expected to be important market as mobile operators drive initiatives to bank the unbanked. GIA: Asia-Pacific will emerge as the predominant MFS market in terms of customer base. In Middle East and Africa, the need to provide financial services to remote areas will be central to the growth of m-banking. For more insight into MFS in developing nations, see: The insider's guide to banking the unbanked. 3) In developed nations m-banking will be driven by banks: GIA: In North America and Europe, m-banking is extension of online banking, as banks respond to growth of mobile Web. But in Europe, m-banking is in early stages, driven by convenience and value-add rather than revenue generation. Berg Insight: Evolving from traditional/online banking; m-banking will attract 115 million users in Europe and 86 million users in North America, by 2015. ABI: Banking institutions will be the major promoters of MFS, as it helps to increase customer stickiness, help banks cut costs and automate, and most importantly, to reach the unbanked. ABI: In the US, Bank of America is a leader of m-banking. Launched in May 2007 it now has 1.5 million subscribers. 4) Remittance/transfers by mobile is growing much faster than m-banking (driven by developing nations) ABI Research (July 2009) predicts that 170 million mobile subscribers worldwide will make domestic person-toperson payments (i.e. transfers) in 2011 that's three times as many as those that will conduct traditional banking functions by mobile. This is driven by the enthusiasm for such services in developing world often from previously unbanked people. Berg Insight predicts international money transfers will increasingly be done by mobile. By 2015 315 percent of transfers handled by agent networks today will be carried out by mobile handset (worth US$1.26.2 billion in revenues to the mobile industry).

Part H: Venture capital investment in mobile companies

Venture capitalists are investing more and more of their funds in mobile companies: Research by Rutburg & Co (Jan 2012) finds that VCs spent US $6.3 billion or 42.4 percent of their budgets on mobile investments in 2011 (up from $4.5 billion or 30.4 percent in 2010). VC investments in mobile marketing and advertising companies was $592 million in 2011 (up from $128 million). VC investments in mobile commerce and payments was $558 million in 2011 (up from $276 million). VC investments in mobile health was $356 million in 2011 (up from $209 million).

Top five VC financings in mobile in 2011 according to Rutburg & Co Company Location Type of company wholesale mobile broadband provider Amount

LightSquared USA

$265 million

InMobi

USA

mobile advertising network $200 million mobile display technology for e-readers mobile consumer accessories mobile telecom towers for Africa

Plastic Logic

UK

$200 million

Jawbone

USA

$159 million

Eaton Towers UK

$150 million

Top five most active VC investors in mobile companies in 2011 Number of investments

VC Firm

Mobile companies invested in by VCs

Sequoia Capital

24

Bubble Motion, Bump, Clickatell, Color, Cotendo, DailyBooth, Evernote, Flite, Inkling (2), Just Dial, MeLLmo, Meraki, MobileIron, MoboTap, Onavo, Quantenna, Sencha, Sourcebits, Square, Stoke,

Synapsense, Trippy, Unity 4tiitoo, AltoBridge, Animoca, Arcsoft, Borqs, CloudMade, Digital Chocolate, GainSpan, InVisage, ip.access, July, Kno, mFoundry, Mocana, NeuString, SecureKey, SkyCross, skyrockit, Sotera, Swrve, TOA, Total Immersion, Urban Airship AppRedeem, BankSimple, Bump, Drchrono, EggCartel, Everyme, Game Closure, Hyperink, just.me, Kno, Mindless, Dribble, Onswipe, Orchestra, Parse, Poshmark, ShowMe, Sincerely, SnapGuide, Swrve, Tagstand, Trippy Airy Labs, Astrid, Crittercism, Echoecho, Enterproid, just.me, Milk, Miso, Nettle, Ordr.in, Parse, Pocket Change, Read It Later, Rumble, Scvngr, Stickery, Subtext, ThinkNear, TweetNGo Aerohive, Apperian, Awarepoint, Cooliris, Crittercism, Fixmo, Flipboard, GOGII, iControl, INRIX, Jawbone, Kovio, Path, Session M, Shazam, Square, Stoke, Waze, WorkSmart via: mobiThinking

Intel Capital

23

SV Angel

21

Google Ventures

19

Kleiner Perkins

19

Source: Rutburg & Co (January 2012)

Please comment below or email editor (at) mobiThinking.com. Be the first to know when mobiThinking adds new stats, guides, competitions etc follow mobiThinking on Twitter: @mobithinking. And dont miss: Most popular content on mobiThinking in 2011 Mobile events 2012: best conferences, great discounts and free tickets 19 video interviews with leading mobile experts The insiders guide to mobile device security The mobile city project the blueprint of a truly mobilized city The insiders guide to device detection The insiders' guides to worlds greatest mobile markets Guide to mobile agencies Guide to mobile ad networks

 Guide to mobile industry awards The big compendium of global mobile stats mobiThinking. Feel free to reference, quote or paraphrase parts of mobiThinking articles, clearly stating and linking to mobiThinking as the source, but reprinting or republishing the whole or substantial parts of the piece without permission will not be tolerated. Please see mobiThinkings legal statement. Rating for this article:
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Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 27 February, 2012 - 08:11.

Hi Sir, How are you??? I found http://mobithinking.com does provided important news regards mobile Marketing in Vietnam. Hence,I am writing to inquiry some information, hope that you could provide some advise. Please see the following: - Number or Mobile in Vietnam and penetration percentage (versus total population) - 3G / GPRS / WIFI users in the country and penetration percentage (versus total population) - Smart phones % / Feature phones - Nokia / iPhone / Android / iPad etc split - Impressions or PVs levels - Any information on usage? Where do they go i.e. Social Media, versus Content Download, versus News etc... Appreciated if you could give some advise. Thanks, Mr Lim reply

Submitted by SunWalk Media (not verified) on 27 February, 2012 - 03:53.

Lot of great info! BTW, as far as mobile goes, business are still in the dark about QR codes and how having a mobile website is much more beneficial than an app. Looking forward to ad companies other than Google to make things more available on mobile. reply

Submitted by Bala A Kumar (not verified) on 13 February, 2012 - 05:53.

Like to receive such update on regular basis, could you please. cheers bala reply

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 8 February, 2012 - 07:04.

Hi Can you please help me out with the percentage of subcribers in Indian Metros( Delhi,Kolkata, Mumbai and Chennai) using handsets,Smartphones and Tablets >? Also other information related to this will be highly appreciated ..Thanks in advnace reply

Submitted by Kacy (not verified) on 28 January, 2012 - 00:27.

All of my questions settled-thanks! reply

Submitted by Chris Alexander (not verified) on 7 December, 2011 - 23:33.

As a SEO accredited specialist I am very interested how the mobile market will unfold. I think the market is small compared to even a year from now where projections are going to be 50% higher for mobile users. As pointed out imagine the impact of the difference between a text message which on average is read in 4 seconds then the time it takes for a recipient to read an email reply

Submitted by Stefan Heller (not verified) on 23 November, 2011 - 19:53.

The source I found for the SMS quote was from Mobile Squared (UK Research company http://mobilesquared.co.uk/). They have a graphic in a white paper they produced called "Conversational Advertising. reply

Submitted by Vitamini (not verified) on 22 November, 2011 - 19:53.

Great content. As a web developer what i know is that i got more and more request for responsive web design adaptable to mobile devices. reply

Submitted by Darshana (not verified) on 22 November, 2011 - 08:39.

This data is incredible. Thanks a ton for these figures put here. reply

Submitted by admin on 21 November, 2011 - 18:01.

@all thanks for all your comments, were glad the mobile stats compendium comes in useful. @Rose @ Anonymous mobiThinking is happy for you to quote from any of our content, assuming you credit us and link back, but if you are using statistics from a particular analyst group you should always cite the original source of the data. Most of the content here is publicly available information, so if your activity is journalistic, academic or non-profit-making then we wouldnt expect any analyst group to mind you using the stats, correctly and sourced, as all publicity is good publicity. However if your activity paid-for you should probably ask permission to reuse the stats. Also we usually concentrate on global stats, if you want data on a particular country, then try the local telecom regulator. The author is the mobiThinking editor Andy Favell, but he prefers that you just cite mobiThinking. @Sergio estimates and forecasts for mobile payments vary greatly, as so many elements remain unknown e.g. will NFC payments take off, take off slowly or take off really quickly? Also the definitions of what constitutes mobile payments varies a lot from research group to research group. But however analysts define mobile payments, mcommerce (i.e. purchasing goods and services via the mobile Web/app) will only be a part of the story. mcommerce (probably) does include NFC payments and other mobile ticketing or money transfers (i.e. banking-type transactions initiated via mobile), for example. reply

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 16 November, 2011 - 04:43.

Hi, Can I Copy and Share these facts. reply

Submitted by sergio (not verified) on 14 November, 2011 - 04:28.

Cannot reconcile most statistics seem to indicate that mobile payments will acount for around 280 Billion $ in the US market (about 25% of the world market) by 2016 yet some stats (See Nov. Forrester) quote just over 31 Billion by 2016. Am I missing something? reply

Submitted by Tania (not verified) on 4 November, 2011 - 11:19.

i do not close this tab. i am hired by a telecom company as a technical writer, although i am do not have a technical background. i refer to this page for a lot of my writing as well as for understanding the scenario. thanks. :) reply

Submitted by Xplor Global (not verified) on 12 October, 2011 - 02:04.

Your team has put together a wonderful site full of resources we can all tap into. We will definitely be sharing this content with our group. And all the credit goes to your hard work. Thanks again. Judy reply

Submitted by stock market tips (not verified) on 10 October, 2011 - 10:35.

I appreciate your post. I also wrote that SMS advertising provides a cost effective method of targeting promotions to specific customer profiles. You might want to remind customers of specific events or promotions, but for whatever reasons, SMS allows you to pass information directly to the right customer at very affordable prices and fast delivery. reply

Submitted by Mrs Kumar (not verified) on 7 October, 2011 - 09:45.

I agree that very soon the m-banking will surpass the conventional banking activities in India as well. reply

Submitted by Otieno Ogeda (not verified) on 4 October, 2011 - 16:20.

very credible information. reply

Submitted by Rose (not verified) on 10 September, 2011 - 08:58.

Hi, I am doing a porject regarding the smartphone usage in Singapore and I want to use statistics this article has mentioned. Hence, can i know the name of the author so that I can do citation for this? Thanks. reply

Submitted by admin on 4 September, 2011 - 09:02.

@everyone Thanks for all the comments, its appreciated. If you find it useful, please help spread the word and take a look at mobiThinkings other content, for example, take our look at brand-new mobile cities guide:http://mobithinking.com/mobile-city-project @Anonymous we will investigate if there is any data on operators/manufacturer relationships, but suspect it may be confidential. @rwk we dont know of any resource or methodology to estimate the share of SIM-unlocked phones, but will investigate. @Mohamed Sami please go ahead. Please cite the original source of the data as well as the mobiThinking global mobile stats compendium, with a link back. @Amit This would make a very interesting and lengthy debate, but were not sure mobiThinking is ready to take on the challenge but we will consider it. reply

Submitted by Dr.A.Jagadeesh (not verified) on 10 August, 2011 - 06:50.

Very exhaustive information on Mobile phones and its usage around the world.It will act as reference material. Thanks for publishing such important and useful statistics. Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India reply

Submitted by filmword (not verified) on 10 August, 2011 - 02:39.

Just starting out on simple, tiny web ap - never knew the number of users was already so HUGE!!! Thanks for your valuable tools and information - appmakr.com and other sites ought to be paying you to present this info too. reply

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 9 August, 2011 - 16:26.

Do you happen to know of any sort of Phone-Operator Channel Map? Which explains which phone makers have relationships with which Telco/Mobile Operators? Any information would be great :) reply

Submitted by Mohamed Sami (not verified) on 1 August, 2011 - 13:44.

Hi, this is great research and information, i'm working on Strategy and i want to use some of these data as reference could I ? reply

Submitted by rwk (not verified) on 31 July, 2011 - 19:27.

Thanks for keeping this amazing source of information always updated: truly invaluable. Would you know of a resource or methodology to estimate the share of SIM-unlocked phones (especially smartphones)? Thanks reply

Submitted by amit (not verified) on 30 July, 2011 - 18:10.

This is very informative indeed. But i wish to know as to why people today spend a large percentage of their hard earned money on buying mobile phones and the services related therein. And why do we expect the handset to last only a year or two. Is that value for money? Have we as consumers been completed deluded by systamatic brainwashing done by overwhealming blurbs. reply

Submitted by mks (not verified) on 23 July, 2011 - 10:37.

Your analysis is outstanding.... reply

Submitted by admin on 3 May, 2011 - 20:52.

@Max. It varies greatly. It is very difficult to guess how much a retailer would spend on a mobile app, without knowing more about their intentions. Is it a Web app or a native app? It also depends on how sophisticated the app is does it include m-commerce? If it is a native app the price climbs rapidly the more types of handset the app will work on. Personally Id expect a basic, but functional retail download app on one or two platforms to start at $100K in development costs. Then theres all the cost of promoting the app... could be the same again. Anyone else like to help with this? reply

Submitted by admin on 3 May, 2011 - 20:41.

@ Tapas, sorry we don't have handset share for all countries. All we can say for sure is that one third of handsets sold globally are Nokia. @ N.Kumar. Sorry we dont have any more information on the Indian market, other than that which is included in this guide: http://www.mobithinking.com/guide-mobile-web-India, which was published one year ago. @ Anonymous, sorry we dont have any data on age of people who download wallpapers/video of models in swimsuits or similar content. reply

Submitted by admin on 3 May, 2011 - 20:29.

@Kate different research analysts use different definitions, sources of data and algarythms for calculating estimates of future spend. It isnt unusual for projections for the same thing to be wildly different. While there is some overlap between m-payments and m-commerce, they are not the same (usually). M-payments would include m-ticketing and m-vouchers for example which I personally wouldnt include in m-commerce if redeemed in store m-commerce, I consider to be sales of goods and services via a mobile site or mobile app. reply

Submitted by admin on 3 May, 2011 - 20:21.

@researcher#1, @Anonymous Please cite the mobiThinking global mobile stats compendium, with a link back. The author is the mobiThinking editor Andy Favell, but he prefers that you just cite mobiThinking. But you should also cite the original source of the data in this case the mobile subscriber numbers the source is the ITU. reply

Submitted by N.Kumar (not verified) on 28 April, 2011 - 07:50.

plz provide some insights and forcasts for mobile advertisement scenario in india.its present status,Usage pattern(as in what format of mobile advertisement is consumed the maximum) reply

Submitted by Tapas Ghatak (not verified) on 21 April, 2011 - 08:17.

please tell me nokia india market share in 2011 reply

Submitted by Researcher#1 (not verified) on 17 April, 2011 - 13:26.

I am conducting a study on telecommunication Industry. I am looking for a statistics about how many are the current/actual cellphone / mobile phone user up to at least year 2010. It seems that I got the figure in this website. May I cite your blog then? reply

Submitted by Max (not verified) on 13 April, 2011 - 15:42.

I was wondering how much do you think a retailer with annual revenues of around 700 mil would spend on a mobile app? reply

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 12 April, 2011 - 00:52.

This is wonderful information. I'm writing a paper about cell phones (texting in particular) and these statistics would be perfect. Might i suggest you add the contributors/authors who wrote this page so that I among other may more professionally cite your information. reply

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 31 March, 2011 - 07:40.

Hi, i wish to understand, what is the %age of people who download wallpapers/video of Models in Swimsuit's and similar content reply

Submitted by Kate (not verified) on 21 March, 2011 - 20:32.

This is great information consolidation! I was wondering how you reconcile the discrepancy between the Juniper esitmate for $170B in 2011 in m-payments (representing it says only 5% of retail ecommerce) and then later the point about ABI's estimate for $117B by 2015 for m-commerce (which it says represents 8% of ecommerce total). ??? reply

Submitted by admin on 7 March, 2011 - 08:58.

@ Stan we believe that revenue from AdMob was included in Googles $1billion, but it appears to only be a small proportion. In the earning call when this was announced @17:14 Patrick Pichette CFO says: I just want to add one fact regarding the new disclosures that Jonathan just gave you. Obviously this is revenues from two different angles of our business and with it we recognize in some cases some small overlaps so for example the AdMob revenues are obviously included both in the mobile number because it is a mobile product and in display because it is a display product. These are very small but I wish to clarify this out for every body. See:http://mobithinking.com/blog/google-one-billion We have been tracking the IDC estimates for the shares of the mobile ad market with interest. The amount that IDC revised the market share for the networks over a three month period causes some concern about IDCs methodology. In September IDC told Business Week that Google and AdMobs 2010 market share would be 21 percent and Apples would be 21 percent of the US mobile ad market. Three months later IDC told Business Week that Google/AdMobs 2010 share would be 59 percent and Apples would have 8.4 percent of the US mobile ad market. If the ad networks are not briefing IDC then why not? If the ad networks are briefing IDC then why the huge discrepancy in the numbers? reply

Submitted by Stan (not verified) on 4 March, 2011 - 21:07.

Thanks for all the great info. However, I think the $1 billion given out by Google in August is no longer operative for Admob revenue. They said they were on track to hit a billion. Since then in December IDC revised the numbers according to Olga Kharif in BusinessWeek: "Google, owner of the world's most popular search engine, will widen its lead in the $877 million U.S. market for mobile advertising, ending the year with a 59 percent share, according to research firm IDC." (That makes their share $517 million or half of their original claim.) http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2010/tc2010123_780712.... reply

Submitted by admin on 15 December, 2010 - 22:56.

@Ken @Emma - Thanks and glad to be of service. @Mattius and others - Thanks for all other comments and suggestions. They're all on the to-do list. @Alex - good luck with the paid for round-up of mobile stats - is it as good as what mobiThinking gives away here for free? reply

Submitted by Ken (not verified) on 14 December, 2010 - 21:01.

Thanks you for this comprehensive list! You saved me about a month of frustration! reply

Submitted by Tomoko (not verified) on 27 November, 2010 - 05:54.

First of all, many thanks for the great summary. This saves my time on mobile market research. I think that what Patrick was referring to is smartphone OS share among smartphone subscribers in US. According to comScore MobileLens, smartphone OS share of 3-month average ending September 2010 was the following and there were 58.7MM smartphone subscribers in US. So, you can estimate the number of users of each OS as follows: Smartphone OS share (# users inMM) RIM 37.3% (21.9) Apple 24.3% (14.3) Google 21.4% (12.6) Microsoft 10.0% ( 5.9) Palm 4.2% ( 2.5) Google's share is growing in a fast pace after introduction of Android. Google is eating share of RIM and Microsoft. Considering that Android users are more likely PC users, this trend is understandable. comScore MobileLens reports are issued quarterly. For the digest of the latest report, go to: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/7/comScore_Repo... reply

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on 12 November, 2010 - 19:52.

You are awesome - thanks!!! It's really great to have this all in one place.

reply

Submitted by Emma Reynolds (not verified) on 5 October, 2010 - 08:23.

Excellent summary of trends and stats - all in one place. I appreciate this source of information so much and value it greatly. Provides for very thought provoking conversations - thank you. Emma reply

Submitted by Mattius (not verified) on 1 October, 2010 - 09:58.

Interesting reading, what I am struggling to find is any behavioural statistics. What are people doing when on the web/ app on a mobile? Predictions of users/page impressions is useful but the long tail is surely how people are using these websites, are the majority just browing, what are they doing when they go to the top mobile optimised sites such as Facebook or Amazon. Are there differing user experience patterns emerging due to the unique capabilities of the devices...etc.. Are we seeing a rise in purchasing through a mobile, how are people using apply processes when on a mobile...with this information you can start to understand the "need", predict to a better level what the true demand of certain processes are likely to be and contribute to design definitions with a greater level of clarity. I have seen similar metrics for internet but not specifically for mobile... should we not be past the point of looking at just the what and how many but starting to focus on the how? Understanding how someone is using something..now that is powerful information!!! reply

Submitted by Shahid (not verified) on 28 September, 2010 - 12:50.

Could anyone share a breakup of the global mobile phone population (region wise) according to the operating system they use? It will be very helpful for mobile applications developers. Thanks. reply

Submitted by Morse (not verified) on 27 June, 2010 - 08:45.

Thank you for this global perspective statistics. As for mobile commerce, a lot lies in security development which is at its minimum at the moment with regard to mobile phones, M commerce is present but its so much in a fragile and minimal form, i sincerely hope that the US$119 billion in 2015 prediction does come true, that will be opening a lot of mobility frontiers. reply

Submitted by admin on 24 April, 2010 - 07:33.

Thanks for the suggestion Greg. We plan to add more statistics to this section as we find them. I've seen plenty of data on text messaging generally, but not so much on text marketing or consumer reaction. I don't recall seeing any on 2d codes. But it's exactly the sort of thing we are interested in. Editor. reply

Submitted by Greg (not verified) on 23 April, 2010 - 23:04.

Thanks for posting this information. One stat I've heard thrown around, and can't find the source relates to mobile text messaging -- 95% of text messages are read within 4 minutes of receiving. I think we'll see more advertisers get involved with text marketing and 2d codes to quickly access information. reply

Submitted by admin on 21 April, 2010 - 22:42.

Patrick, thanks for the thought-provoking feedback. We've tried to give the big, global picture here, using the credible data from reliable sources. From a usage perspective, the headline figure here is unique mobile Internet users. This is estimated at around 500 million globally (though this figure seems low if China has 233 million as quoted by the national statistics). I suspect you are talking about how mobile Internet use is divided between users of different handsets, we couldn't find any substantive research on this. If you know of any, please let us know. To measure this objectively you'd need the cooperation of all the operators (this doesn't happen, but it will, eventually). Many of the figures for handset data you see in the media are drawn from mobile ad network's reports, these are based on page impressions, not unique users and are subjective and reflect the nature of each network's business (and to some extent agendas) - hence the contradictory findings. I'm struggling to understand the figures you quote can you or the publishers explain more, please? I surmise that the 70 percent must be page impressions, rather than unique users. Are your clients able to distinguish unique users? If they can't then they might be seeing the same small proportion of users doing a lot of browsing. I suspect most Apple and Android users are on flat-rate-data plans, where as most US mobile subscribers aren't is that

correct? (What will your usage figures look like when the US has pervasive flat-rate-data plans as Japan has had for years?). I'm assuming that every visitor is important to your clients, not just the ones that do a lot of browsing? I plan to look more closely at individual markets, it's possible that mobile Internet usage nationally in the US is much lower than I thought and Apple's business is much more concentrated. Or perhaps something (e.g. do they have download apps that might distort the figures?) makes your clients unrepresentative of the rest of the US. But from the global perspective Apple shipped 39 million units (that's the highest estimate) in 2008 and 2009 (sorry to return to sales data, but it is important) assuming they all use the mobile Internet that's still only 7.8 percent of the 500 million (that's probably conservative) global mobile Web users. (Android sold 7.4 million in 2008/9). What proportion will Apple have when this is 1 billion global mobile Web users in a few years time? There's nothing wrong with your clients focusing on Apple or Android if they bring in the most traffic (that's not our point) as long as this isn't at the expense of all their other customers that do not use those particular cell phones. Unfortunately some companies (in the West only, mobile is a lot more inclusive in Japan for example) will focus budgets on native applications for a single platform, instead of investing in mobile Web and SMS to service all customers whatever their handset. It is a mystery to me why this occurs in mobile, but not in any other medium how many brands run TV ads that only worked on one type of television (even if it was believed that the people that owned that brand watch more TV)? Please get in touch and introduce me to these publishers, I'm fascinated to know how these figures you quote have come about. Email Andy on: editor (at) mobiThinking.com reply

Submitted by Patrick Collins (not verified) on 21 April, 2010 - 20:41.

Thanks very handy data. But it is not the total view as you claim. I think this data doesn't tell the whole truth. By only reporting on phone sales statistics, and not usage statistics you get a biased view of what is important. The truth is most mobile phones "accessing" the mobile web (off-deck) in North America are iPhones and Android phones. For many publishers that I deal with, Apple and Android makes up to 70% of their mobile web usage. So to play down the influence and importance of building experiences for these specific handsets is further spreading doubt and misinformation. Focus on usage data, and not just sales data and you're better able to determine what to build for now. Patrick. reply

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