The bottom line: As illustrated numerous times within this section, the data dominance and superior browsing experience allowed by smartphones is undeniable.  Making mobile Web user experience smooth, easy, and compelling – as these handsets often do – is shown to consistently drive mobile data traffic.  That many consumers probably can’t tell and don’t care about the difference between mobile websites and HTML sites is also testament to technical developments.

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GARTNER SAYS THE NUMBER OF MOBILE PAYMENT users will increase by 70 percent this year.  Its report claims that 73.4 million users of mpayment in 2009 would represent a leap of 70.4 percent from 2008.  By 2012, it says mobile payment will reach more than 190 million, more than 3 percent of total mobile users worldwide, attaining a level at which it will be considered “mainstream.”

Gartner defines a mobile payment as paying for a product or service using mobile technology such as a short message service (SMS), Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD), and Near Field Communication (NFC). It includes transactions that use cash, bank accounts or debit and credit cards, as well as non-carrier stored value accounts, such as travel cards, gift cards or PayPal. It does not include transactions that use mobile operators’ billing systems, such as purchase of mobile content or telebanking by mobile to the service center via an interactive voice response (IVR) system. Source

The bottom line: Although the definition of mobile payment is ambiguous here, these figures demonstrate that the mass market is slowly growing confident in using their mobile to pay for and transfer money.  Much effort has been made to foster consumer confidence in the micropayment mobile payment space, and the adoption of mobile banking technologies still varies drastically from region to region.  There are regulatory and security challenges to overcome, particularly with the emergence of NFC technologies, but these figures give strong reason for hope.

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SPEECH APPLICATIONS ARE TO TRIPLE by 2014 according to a new Datamonitor report. The report claims that as we get used to using mobile computing devices in ‘hands-busy’, ‘eyes-busy’ environments, speech recognition technologies are expected to gain considerable traction. The global market for advanced speech recognition (ASR) in mobile handsets will increase from $32.7 million in 2009 to $99.6 million in 2014. Meanwhile ASR in-vehicle telematics is expected to grow from $64.3 million in 2009 to 208.2 million by 2014. Source

The bottom line: An exciting array of new voice applications has been promised for some time now, without seeming to gain mass market adoption.  This Datamonitor report suggests the market is still full of potential, and with technologies emerging to intuitively allow users to control device functionality with their voice, these projections may herald the beginning of significant penetration.

Peggy adds: A space to watch is voice-activated mobile search, where “Just say what you want,” the guiding principle of voice search to avoid complex and confusing navigation, and to provide a shortcut to information (in the network) and services (on the mobile device) the user wants, is particularly compelling.

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OPERA’S MINI BROWSER RECORDED MORE THAN 23.4 million users worldwide in April, a jump of 140 percent from the same period one year ago. Page views in America grew 129 percent over the last year; unique users grew 11.8 percent; and there was an average of 198 page views per user in April. U.S. carrier subscribers are said to be viewing more data-intensive pages than those in any other country. Opera said the average page viewed is about 32KB compressed (almost 320KB uncompressed).

Top 10 sites accessed via Opera Mini in the U.S., by number of unique users:

1. Google.com
2. Facebook.com
3. MySpace.com
4. Wikipedia.org
5. YouTube.com (up from 7)
6. Yahoo.com
7. NYTimes.com (down from 5)
8. AccuWeather.com
9. My.Opera.com
10. ESPN.com

Source

The bottom line: The mobile Internet is continuing to see heavy usage and mass adoption, although we should remember these figures are largely coming from BlackBerry handsets operating Opera. The handsets do have massive appeal, as clearly does mobile Internet content.  However, we might also remember that, as a corporate device of choice, their users may not always be paying the bills

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AN AENEAS STRATEGY STUDY OF U.K. ATTITUDE TOWARDS mobile advertising found that 64 percent of consumers would grant permission to receive mobile advertising if they were incentivized.  The majority of the 1,002 consumers surveyed had a more negative initial attitude, but this changed if advertising was made relevant (65 percent positive), permission was asked (67 percent positive), or if the consumer was in control (69 percent positive). It placed mobile amongst the most popular traditional media (print, outdoor, and television) and above the Internet and radio. 

The research also revealed that 52 percent claim engagement with the brands they love is important, five advertisements per day is most accepted by consumers, 52 percent of consumers doesn’t mind listening to a brand message while waiting for someone to pick up the phone, and 54 percent would send an interesting offer they have received to  friends and family

Tarik Fawzi, of Aeneas Strategy Consulting and Management, commented: ”The consumer research shows some unexpected results regarding consumer attitude towards mobile advertising. Also mobile is compared with other media. This shows consumers know what they want and are open towards mobile advertising, if it is offered on their terms.” Source

The bottom line: This study shows once again that relevancy and control of mobile advertising are critical to its consumer acceptance and success.  The challenge mobile advertising faces is in making campaigns relevant, and offering control, but still maintaining a strong enough number of eyeballs to keep brands spending.

Peggy adds: This consumer research will also be discussed during Mobile Advertising U.K. (June 15 in London), when MSG, which was commissioned to research and write the report in collaboration with Aeneas, will present key findings from interviews with 15+ industry executives and influencers.

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41 PERCENT OF U.S. CONSUMERS ARE LIKELY TO PURCHASE a multimedia handset with a data plan as their next phone, says a new study by the Yankee Group. BlackBerry and Apple are the top two brands, considered by 44 percent and 30 percent of prospective buyers, respectively.

Meanwhile, in enterprise, the same analyst claims that 75 percent of small to medium businesses anticipate some reduction in their business technology investments due to the economy. End-user software and hardware are the two areas that will experience the biggest budget cuts. Source

The bottom line: These two nuggets from Yankee illustrate the ongoing consumer affair with smartphones, and the rich data consumption experience they allow, in the face of predictable technology cutbacks which the environment has imposed on smaller businesses. It’s tough out there, but consumers remain enthused about compelling mobile data experiences, if the data plan is right.

At the other end of the spectrum, this shift in mindset also turns up the pressure on mobile search providers to develop services that are (likewise) more useful, engaging and personal. Indeed, improving the mobile search user experience is at the center of a sustainable and successful mobile search and advertising strategy. Users are encouraged to explore the wealth of content and applications at their fingertips, and their urge to discover leads to more queries and more opportunities to deliver paid search advertising. It’s not quite the fixed Internet all over again, but there are similarities.

The outcome is a virtuous cycle where useful search results and targeted advertising convince users that mobile search is a useful way to find content and applications that matter to them. What’s more, the advance of app stores (similar to the excitement the industry experienced when content portals were the rage) underlines the critical importance of a better interplay between search and advertising moving forward.

I am therefore encouraged by improvements (from companies such as Yahoo), and excited by the increasing popularity of new mobile search paradigms, ranging from multimodal search (which has received a much-needed boost thanks to the iPhone); to approaches that integrate human input/judgment to deliver search results we’re much more likely to appreciate. (I am currently compiling a comprehensive directory of mobile search providers, so please contact me to be included. If your story is interesting, I will also profile your company on MSG.)

A category of mobile search high on my radar is visual search. (Companies include: Idée, IQ Engines, Kooaba, Mobile Acuity, Searchme, SnapNow and SnapTell.) I am pleased to report I am close to confirming a date for a podcast with Philipp Schloter, Nokia’s general manager of Point & Find. Nokia (which MSG covered here) just last week took the wraps off a new beta of its visual search service. The technology is cool but the real excitement is about the fit with mobile marketing campaigns. As Julian Pate, Client Partner at interactive marketing agency AKQA, put it in a statement: “The Nokia Point & Find service marries the digital world with the physical world in a way that actually has meaning for brands and consumers. Not only does it allow consumers to engage with brands in an innovative way but provides brands ‘point and purchase’ opportunities with an on-the-go audience.”

This same value proposition is echoed by SnapNow, a U.S.-based visual search company I profiled in my regular column for EContent magazine.

In it I examine the proliferation of pilots and projects that harness mobile to hyperlink images and items, enabling consumers to access information, make purchases or just browse the Web for similar cool content, by simply snapping a picture using their cameraphones. I also interview Tony Keaveny, Head of Sales for SnapNow UK, who updates me on what the company is doing to “snap-enable” content ranging from print to video.

As Tony puts it: “Your phone becomes your mouse and the world around us becomes the Web. It’s about transforming print, packaging, video, outdoor, or just about any other advertising into a portal enabling communication and – more importantly – commerce.”

Tony walks the talk, which is why he has also kindly offered to “snap-enable” the MSG logo, which means you can get more information about MSG by taking a picture of the logo with your cameraphone and sending it to pic@snapnow.co.uk. I’ll think of a contest to make it worth your while. In the meantime, this is  great (!) because MSG is in demand as a media partner and now you can connect to MSG via the  logo on brochures and posters  at industry conferences such as the Open Mobile Summit, June 10-11 in London, a top-notch industry conference organized by OpenMobileMedia, where I chair the session on mobile advertising.  I invite you to read the column here – and to explore the other great content at EContent.

On a personal note, I am proud to be a contributing editor and look forward to collaborating with Michelle Manafy, EContent Editor-in-chief on a special social media issue sure to set the bar. More about that when I put out a call for pitches here and on Twitter (@peggyanne). Michelle is also the programming chair of Information Today’s Enterprise Search Summits (ESS), annual events that encourage deep discussion and practical analysis of the search space. The next one is May 12-13 in NYC. This week Michelle wraps up Buying and Selling EContent Conference, an event that brings together leading executives knowledgeable in the techniques for buying and selling content. She gives her views on the marketplace and the role of user-generated content in this pre-conference audio interview.

But visual search is just one of the 15 categories I have identified in the process of compiling a comprehensive overview and SWOT analysis of the major mobile search players, together with Rudy De Waele, Mobile Web 2.0 luminary and founder of dotopen, an open innovation consulting firm advising start-ups and established companies helping them define business models, forge alliances and pursue funding opportunities.

Our work is in preparation for a workshop on Mobile Search Future Prospects organized by JRC IPTS (Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commission), an organization providing customer-driven support to the EU policy-making process.  The purpose of the workshop next week in Seville, Spain, is to identify mobile search trends and recommendations for policy makers. I cannot attend the event, but look forward to publishing a summary analysis of key points raised during the workshop on MSG.

Connect the dots, and mobile search innovation is shaping up to be a major focus in 2009.

The last word on the increasing importance of mobile search comes from Nokia (via AltSearchEngines.com). During his presentation Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President of Nokia’s new Markets unit, told the audience mobile is the future of search. (Hmmm…Does this conviction mark a new chapter in Nokia’s own mobile search strategy? It’s a topic I’ll raise in my upcoming podcast…)