STATS PACK: Nokia Dissects User-Gen Culture; Mobile Data On The Upswing; Local Mobile Search Rules! » mobilegroove

COMMUNITY ENTERTAINMENT: Nokia predicts that a quarter of entertainment consumed by users in 2012 will be created and shared within peer communities rather than on traditional media. This ‘Circular Entertainment’ phenomenon was identified by Nokia in a study of 9,000 consumers aged 16-35, who are active users of technology and own a mobile device (not restricted to Nokia), carried out by The Future Laboratory.

Some of the key findings from the study include:

· 23 percent buy movies in digital format

· 35 percent buy music on MP3 files

· 25 percent buy music on mobile devices

· 39 percent watch TV on the Internet

· 23 perecnt watch TV on mobile devices

· 46 percent regularly use IM, 37 percent on a mobile device

· 29 percent regularly blog

· 28 percent regularly access social networking sites

· 22 percent connect using technologies such as Skype

· 17 percent take part in Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games

· 17 percent upload to the Internet from a mobile device

Nokia identified four key trends and user groups in the study that they believe will shape the future of content: Immersive Living (create and consume content on the move); Geek Culture (blurred boundary between creativity and commercialism); G Tech (collaboration and democracy of content) and Localism (local content). As users generate more content and become more detached from traditional media, the challenge for brands is to engage with their target audience in unobtrusive ways. The study certainly points towards the building blocks behind Nokia’s content strategy and may help them position the company at the forefront of innovative content offerings.

MOBILE MAPS: Internet, maps and local search are the key services that consumers want on their mobile phones according to a new consumer study from the Kelsey Group . It found that 44.7 percent of U.S. mobile phone users surveyed felt better Internet capability will be key when choosing their next mobile phone. In addition, 9.8 percent carried out mobile Internet searches, 10.7 percent downloaded or looked at maps, and 10.9 percent indicated they had downloaded search or mapping applications for use on both fixed and mobile Internet.

Kelsey predict that mobile search advertising revenues will accelerate from $33.2 million in 2007 to $1.4 billion in 2012. Flat rate data plans will certainly help this acceleration, but it will be usability and quality of service that ultimately deliver users to advertisers.

U.S. MOBILE DATA FIGURES: Having wrapped up Q3 recently, here are some U.S. mobile stats from advisory firm Chetan Sharma Consulting, a company MSG proudly features in the Knowledge Sharing section. Mobile data revenues are still growing, hitting $6.4 billion for 3Q07 (9.4 percent growth) and topping $17.7 billion for the first 9 months of 2007 (a whopping 59 percent increase on 2006). And it’s not just the data revenues that are growing, but their overall contribution to operator figures. The contribution of data to service revenues jumped to almost 18 percent in 3Q07 and 50-60 percent of this figure can be attributed to non messaging data, depending on the operator. These figures are certainly encouraging for operators in their quest to build new revenue streams to replace dwindling voice revenues.

LOCAL SEARCH: The Yellow Pages Association has launched a new service called localsearchguide along with sponsors (eStara and Superpages.com) and supporting partners (comScore, SEMPO and The Kelsey Group). The existence of this new local search guide speaks volumes about the traction mobile search is gaining in the marketplace and in the period September to November 2007, results from the Local Search Guide instant-results threw up some interesting stats:

· 37 percent use free directory assistance

· 17 percent most often use SMS/text messaging

· 12 percent say they use downloadable mobile search applications to find local information

· 34 percent report not using mobile search because the experience is frustrating

As with all things mobile, usability is the key and with over one in three finding the user experience frustrating there is a clear challenge for the marketplace to address if users are to remain interested in mobile local search.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 4:53 pm and is filed under Mobile Search, Mobile Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.