Mobile Groove

What do we really want from our branded, self-service mobile apps? The numbers tell a mixed story. Usage data shows we appreciate instant access to the companies we do business with via mobile apps aimed at taking the heavy lifting out of resolving customer service issues and questions. Meantime, a raft of reports suggests the appeal of instantly downloading the latest apps is losing its luster.

But rather than speculate about consumer attitudes toward customer service apps Nuance teamed up with Vocalabs to find out what consumers really think about their self-service apps. The findings are a wake up call for companies everywhere.

BlackBerry retains #1 position on mobile browsing leader board

Bango – the mobile payments and analytics specialist – reports a 600% growth in traffic to mobile websites. The company analyzed traffic to a range of mobile sites over the last 12 months. Data was gathered by sampling across 50 million phone users worldwide who have accessed third party mobile sites through its platform.

The key findings from Bango’s annual mobile usage study record 6 times the number of visits to mobile websites, comparing December 2009 with the same month a year earlier. The average time on site is measured as 3 minutes, 21 seconds, averaged across user visits to all sites, compared with just over one and half minutes the previous year. The analysis also measured the average number of pages viewed per visit at 5 pages, up from just over 2 pages per visit twelve months before.

Kudos to Mark Hawkins and the team over at the Mobile Data Association (MDA) for bringing media and U.K. mobile operators together in a partnership that recognizes the skills gap that threatens to stunt the spread of mobile data services and, ultimately, the growth of the

MOBILE SOCIAL NETWORKING USERS WILL NUMBER MORE THAN 641.6 MILLION by 2013, according to the latest predictions from Informa. A new report from the company says that at the end of 2008, there were just 92.5 million users of mobile social networking services, but that will skyrocket to between 641.6 million and 873.1 million by the end of 2013. It adds that the most popular mobile social services

TWO-THIRDS OF TWEETS COME FROM THE WEB, says a new report from Rapleaf. The big news today is that location information is coming to Twitter, as the service will make location information about its users available. But Rapleaf says that 65 percent of users’ messages come from their PCs. 6 percent come from text, 4 percent come from the mobile web, and another 5 to 9 percent come from BlackBerry and iPhone apps. Source

The bottom line: This is sort of a chicken-and-egg situation. Does the fact that roughly a fifth of tweets come from mobile users make location information slightly irrelevant, or will the availability of the location info drive more mobile usage? We’ll take the glass-half-full view: getting 20 percent of tweets from mobile devices is a solid amount, and giving users the chance to leverage their location should increase it further.

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MOBILE AD BUDGETS BUCK THE WIDER DOWNWARD TREND, and will hit $5.7 billion by 2014, says Juniper Research in a new report. While overall ad spending is being hit by budget cutbacks, mobile is set to grow, as it offers engagement with the consumer and a more quantifiable ROI than other mediums.

Still, that $5.7 billion will only account for 1.5 percent of the total global ad spend in 2014, with many advertisers as yet unconvinced that mobile has a big enough reach to justify higher spending. Source

Editor’s note: MSG warmly welcomes Carlo Longino, who will contribute a mix of news and commentary starting with today’s Data Points post. Carlo – a writer, analyst and consultant who blogs about the mobile industry at MobHappy.com – has a long and impressive track record in all things mobile.

ALMOST HALF OF MOBILE DOWNLOADERS GRAB APPS MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK, according to some research from GetJar.com, a cross-platform app store. GetJar’s users are an active bun…