Here’s another very interesting insight from the Impaq GroupÌs recently-published MOBILE LIFE 1 research.
Here’s today’s top ways people use their mobiles:
1 Voice
2 SMS
3 Switching to silent mode
4 Calculator
5 Taking pictures
6 Surfing WAP sites
7 Using operator portals
8 Mobile search
9 Bluetooth pairing
10 Alert subscriptions
No big surprises there, although I’m a little intrigued to see mobile search coming in at number 8 already. I hadn’t figured on that going really mainstream until next year. So much so, it’s been on my “list if things to post about” for 4 months and I haven’t bothered as I didn’t think it was urgent. I’ll have to do something next week now….
The other notable element is the calculator function – it always scores highly, but no one has ever tried to build on it or exploit this in any way. Maybe because it can’t be improved?
Now (with my best Peter Snow voice) let’s see what happens when we look at tomorrow’s wish list:
TomorrowÌs Top Ten 3G Wish List
1 Mobile coupon redemption
2 Parking meter payment
3 Loyalty cards
4 Season tickets
5 Credit/Debit cards
6 Flight check-in
7 Vending machine payment
8 Retail checkout
9 Marketing communications
10 Using your mobile as a key
This is good news for mobile marketers – in at both number 1 and number 9. Cynics will wonder why this is on a wish list, but as I’ve said before, people like getting mobile marketing messages providing that they follow the rules:
1. It’s opt in and therefore not Spam.
2. It’s timely.
3. It’s targeted.
4. It’s relevant.
5. It adds value to the recipient.
It should be all 5, but I’m willing to concede that only 4 might be OK in some circumstances.
It’s also interesting to see that people clearly want to start paying for things with their mobile phone, which is a position I’ve consistently taken here.
But what about the things that are missing? There’s nothing about video calls, downloading video, watching TV, listening to music/audio and playing games all of which are currently attracting gazillions of dollars in investment. This must be pretty worrying for these companies.
But all’s not completely lost, I’d be very surprised if the phone wasn’t used for listening to music and playing games, but am sticking to my healthy sceptisicm about mobile TV and video as being serious, long term profitable markets.
What do you think?
With that, I’ll bid you a very fine weekend. Have a good one and thanks for reading..
Russell
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