Why Talk When You Can Text?

Text messaging overtakes mobile voice calls.

The average mobile subscriber in the US sent and received more SMS text messages than mobile telephone calls during Q2 2008, according to Nielsen. This was the second consecutive quarter in which the average number of text messages was significantly higher than the average number of phone calls.
John du Pre Gauntt, senior analyst at eMarketer explained that communicating by text was close to having a conversation, and noted that marketers could embed links to pop text sessions into other media (click-to-map, click-to-call, click-to-video).

"The biggest mistake for marketers is to confuse texting by users over age 35 with asynchronous e-mail. If we look at text/Twitter and IM, there is a lot of value to textual communication that comes closer to—but is not the same as—synchronous voice communications. Marketers engaging with text still need to master the art of conversation," Mr. Gauntt continued.

Revenues from all ad-supported messaging in North America will approach $4 billion by 2011.

Riding the Perfect Storm of Mobile Marketing

A flurry of new studies and product releases last week seems to point to one thing: we're about to enter the perfect storm for mobile marketing. And it's time to think about how mobile marketing is different and how we can fit it into our increasingly complicated campaigns.

And while you may feel like you've heard this before well things are different now. The technology's become fairly mature. People are used to texting and mobile e-mail. Devices work a heck of a lot better, and today's mobile devices now come tricked out with GPS, Wi-Fi, cameras, and a host of other features that the old four-function flip phones of yore could only dream of.

People are changing their use of mobile technology, too. Fully 17 percent of households are ditching their landlines for mobile phones, and Nielsen Mobile predicts that the number could jump to 20 percent by year's end. While it's not a big surprise to anyone that teens are leading the mobile revolution, I was amused by a recent Harris Interactive study which found that nearly 60 percent of teens credited their mobile phone for improving their lives and that four out of five teens carry mobile devices (a 40 percent jump from 2004). In fact, the devices have become so much a part of their lives that the same study found that 42 percent of teens could text blindfolded!

While the mobile Web and mobile marketing in general have had their share of overhyped moments and jump-the-gun promises in the past 10 years, there's no question now that if you're a marketer, you'd better be paying attention. And once you start paying attention, you'd better start thinking differently.

Source: clickz.com

Mobile hardware outpaces software, user capabilities

Mobile hardware is outpacing software capabilities and the mobile user experience, according to a panel of technologists at Technology Review's Emerging Technologies Conference held at MIT in Cambridge, Mass. Among those speaking was Rich Miner, group manager of mobile platforms at Google Inc., who said open operating systems -- like the one launched on Google's long-awaited G1 Android phone -- will drive future innovation, but much of it may be lost on the user in the short term.

"The easiest way to see this is ... about 80% of mobile phones have cameras in them today, yet if you were to ask how many people actually use those cameras (know how to get photos off of the phone), it's probably literally 10% to 15%," Miner said. (ie ClickOVA)

But with the entrance of companies such as Microsoft Corp. and Google in the mobile platform market, a shift is coming. In a few years, a large contingent of consumers may not even use a PC, but instead perform all their Internet and communications applications on mobile devices, according to panelist Kevin Lynch, chief technology officer of the experience and technology group at Adobe.

Mobile Ads Might Work with Teens

Their attention has a price

Nearly one-half of teen mobile phone users in the US said they would be at least somewhat interested in accepting mobile ads, as long as they got something in return, according to a September 2008 study conducted by Harris Interactive for mobile trade group CTIA.

For the past three years, Synovate has surveyed mobile phone users in the US on behalf of the Mobile Marketing Association. Each year, at least three-quarters of respondents said they were not interested in mobile marketing.

Video Ad Spend: Building to Steep Growth

It now appears that the market will take until 2010 to surpass the $1-billion mark. Beyond 2010, huge additional sums will go to online video advertising each succeeding year. Two essential factors will support that growth: more trusted video content to sustain advertising and more large advertisers (brand marketers, mainly) seeing enough scale to enter this market in a big way.

While only 2% of total Internet ad spending will go to video in 2008, that share will be nearly five times higher by the end of 2013.

Further, as total Internet ad spending approaches total television ad levels in 2013, it will become commonplace for TV network ad sales to be a two-way play, with media buyers looking to both online and TV for most campaigns, even in the upfront market.

College Students' Social Networking

Many collegians are on daily.

Social networking is an everyday activity for the majority of college students, and the percentage of students who use the networks daily has nearly doubled in the past two years. EDUCAUSE compared social network usage at 44 colleges and universities in 2006, 2007 and 2008. It found that nearly twice as many students at these institutions use social networks every day in 2008 (59%) than did in 2006 (33%).

Source: emarketer.com

Text Messages Drive Mobile Data Growth

Medium demands savvy use by marketers

Mobile data service revenues in the US rose to $14.8 billion for the first half of 2008, according to the CTIA. That was up 40% over the first half of 2007, when data revenues reached $10.5 billion. Mobile data now accounts for one-fifth of all mobile revenues.

"More and more people are using wireless devices to access the Internet, take photos, get directions, watch videos, download music and send text messages," said Steve Largent, CEO of the CTIA, in a statement.

Do Ads Fit with Mobile User-Generated Content?

Once, long, long ago, advertisers only had to worry what was on the facing page.

YouTube educated the mass market about authoring and sharing user-generated content (UGC), and now advertisers are catching on, too.

Clearly, mobile UGC spending is growing. But advertisers still face challenges in reaching consumers in highly personalized—and often unpredictable—UGC settings. Nevertheless, smart marketers are beginning to address the distinct mobile UGC environment through contests, branded tools and other forms of digital collateral that add value to consumers' creative and distribution efforts.

Evolution of the Mobile Phone

See how Far the Mobile Phone has come.

Social Networks Are Not Yet Universal

Not everyone is pokable.

More than one-half of adults surveyed in 17 countries do not know what social networking is, according to Synovate. The company said it asked over 13,000 consumers in Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, South Africa, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the US if they were familiar with social networking.

Although such aggregate findings are useful in a directional sense (many consumers worldwide have yet to hear about social networking), Synovate noted differences in individual countries and among demographic segments.

Social Networks Get Down to Business

Do business and socializing mix?

Apparently so. As the number of business users of social networks continues to increase, advertising expenditures will rise, too. In the US this year, advertisers will spend $40 million to reach a business audience on online social networks, and that is just the beginning. According to eMarketer projections, that ad spending will reach $210 million in 2012.

A clear sign of the revolution in business thinking and behavior is the popularity of LinkedIn—the most widely known professional social network—where the audience has more than doubled in the past year, and the rise of additional business-oriented networks, including a raft of networks aimed at verticals.

Source: emarketer.com

Global Mobile Broadband subscribers hit 50 Million

The GSMA, the global trade group for the mobile industry, today
announced that the number of worldwide subscribers using Mobile Broadband (HSPA) networks has topped the 50 million mark from 11 million one year ago. Global uptake of HSPA technology among consumers and businesses is accelerating, indicating continued traffic growth for high-speed mobile networks worldwide. Wireless Intelligence expects the number of HSPA connections to be growing by 4 million per month by the end of 2008.

High-speed mobile access opens up a wide range of services for consumers, including interactive gaming, music and video streaming and the easy sharing of pictures and entertainment. Businesses can use fast Mobile Broadband to rollout advanced solutions for flexible working and to enable field workers to have quick and easy access to the company’s information systems.

Source: GSMA

Who Are You Going to Call?

Mobile phone subscribers, operators and content providers all have an important need for a comprehensive mobile content backup and transfer service. The data on a consumer’s mobile phone, which previously used to be just contacts, now includes calendars, tasks, pictures, licensed content (such as wallpapers, ringtones, and music) and purchased applications.

U.S. 3G Adoption Rivals Europe

The number of U.S. subscribers with 3G-enabled devices has grown 80%, to 64.2 million during the past year, comScore reports. The market has responded enthusiastically as mobile vendors have rolled out their enhanced networks and a new crop of 3G-enabled devices.

Source: Wirelessweek.com

LG officially announces the 8 megapixel KC910

Everyone’s quick to point out the aesthetic similarities to some other touchscreen phone made by some dude who grows apples or something, but the KC910 is packin’ a whole lot of heat inside:

• 8 mp shooter w/ Xenon flash and Schneider-Kreuznach
• 30 FPS video recording at 640×480, 60 FPS at 320×240
• Internal GPS w/ Geotagging
• Dolby Audio
• Divx/Xvid support
• Manual Focus
• Smile, focus, face detection, Image stabilization
• Quad-band GSM, HSDPA 7.2 mbps
• Bluetooth 2.0
• WiFi
• MicroSD up to 8GB
• 3″ touchscreen, 240×400
• TV out support

Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Phone Sales Increased 12 Percent in Second Quarter of 2008

Worldwide sales of mobile phones reached close to 305 million units in the second quarter of
2008, a 11.8 percent increase over the second quarter of 2007, according to Gartner, Inc.
Sales of mobile phones in the mature markets of Western Europe and North America slightly
recovered after a difficult start. Western Europe reached close to 42 million units while North
America surpassed 44 million units in the second quarter of 2008.

Nokia sold 120.4 million mobile phones in the second quarter of 2008 and widened its lead
to control 39.5 percent of the global mobile phones market.

Samsung’s mobile phones sales into the channel reached 45.7 million units.

With mobile phone sales reaching 30.4 million units, Motorola’s worldwide market share
dropped further in the second quarter of 2008 at -4.5 percent year-on-year.

LG’s positive momentum continued in the second quarter of 2008, with mobile phones sales
amounting to 26.7 million units. This represented a 2 percentage-point increase
year-on-year.

Sony Ericsson’s market share grew slightly in the second quarter of 2008 sequentially with
worldwide mobile phone sales reaching close to 23 million units.

Source: Gartner

Getting ClickOVA to work on your Blackberry Device (For T-Mobile USA users)

To get ClickOVA to work on your BlackBerry device with T-Mobile USA, you have to change the internet settings on your device:

Navigate to Settings->Advanced Options -> TCP -> Configure APN - put wap.voicestream.com for the APN, leave the username and password blank.

For further assistance contact us: support@clickova.com

Mobile Social Networking As Killer App?

Social networking may soon grow from just another mobile application into “killer app” status, JupiterResearch said in its latest report.