M3 Mobile facts

The top 10 consumer mobile applications for 2012, as predicted by Gartner (November 2009).

Order was determined by impact on consumers and industry players, considering revenue, loyalty, business model, consumer value and estimated market penetration):

• Money transfer – most services offering person-to-person transfers, using Short Message Service (SMS), signed up several million users within their first year. (See mobile financial services section below for all the stats on money transfers).
• Location-based services – Gartner predicts that the LBS user base will grow globally from 96 million in 2009 to more than 526 million in 2012.
• Mobile search – the user experience of mobile search needs to improve to drive customer loyalty and drive sales and marketing opportunities.
• Mobile browsing – 60 percent of handsets shipped in 2009 can browse the mobile Web, rising to approximately 80 percent in 2013. Therefore, the mobile Web will be a key part of most corporate B2C mobile strategies.
• Mobile health monitoring – i.e. using IT and mobile telecommunications to monitor patients remotely..
• Mobile payment – paying for goods and services over the mobile Web.
• Near-field-communication services – NFC allows contactless data transfer between devices and terminals typically to pay for transport or to cash in a mobile coupon.
• Mobile advertising – Gartner expects spending on mobile advertising to reach US$7.5 billion in 2012 from US$530.2 million in 2008.
• Mobile instant messaging – Gartner thinks users really desire Mobile IM, especially in developing markets. This presents an opportunity for mobile advertising and social networking.
• Mobile music – apart from ring tones and ring-back tones, which have turned into a multibillion-dollar service, mobile music has so far has been disappointing.

Info on US mobile customer

In 2009, U.S. cell phone subscribers sent and received on average 390 text messages per month, compared to making 230 voice calls a month, according to the Mobile Business Statistics.

• Between the ages of 12 – 45 will send 60% more text messages than make voice calls.
• Currently 1/3 of the world has mobile internet access, which is twice as many as the number of internet-connected PCs.
• 60% of the world’s population is expected to have access to the Internet through a mobile device in 1 year!
• Mobile web technologies allow us to provide location-specific resources to users.
• Development of mobile websites and mobile applications is very different from their desktop counterparts, and requires specialized knowledge of the platform.
• Two thirds of mobile phone users are subscribers of “SMS text marketing” 2.1 billion people are actively text messaging today (according to mobile statistics 2009)
• There are two times as many active sms users as are active users of email
• In the U.S. alone, over 450 billion sms text messages were sent in 2009
• On Average text messages are read within 4 minutes compared to 48 hours with email.
• While 65% of e-mail is spam, less than 10% of SMS is spam
• 62% say they use text messaging to communicate with friends
• 55% say they use text messaging to communicate with business associates, clients and partners
• clients revenue increases 10% when utilizing mobile websites for shopping centers and malls.

The most popular activities of mobile Internet users, according to IDC (December 2009) are:

• Using search engines, reading news and sports information, downloading music and videos, and sending/receiving email and instant messages. Over the next four years, IDC predicts the fastest growing activities will be purchasing, social networking and blogging.
• Accessing online business applications and corporate email systems will also grow rapidly.
• Mobile financial services, including m-banking and money transfers; and mobile payment, including m-commerce and contactless payments

"Mobile handsets are in an excellent position to become the primary digital channel for providers of banking and related financial services in emerging markets” – Berg Insight.

Mobile financial services (MFS) (m-banking, m-wallets, remittance/transfers etc) are growing fast:

• Berg Insight (April 2010) estimates that users of m-banking and related services (including money transfers) doubled between 2008 and 2009 to 55 million and will double again in 2010. In 2015 there will be 894 million users globally. Growth is being driven by efforts by operators and banks in developing countries (particularly in Asia) to bank the unbanked.
• Global Industry Analysts (GIA) predicts the global customer base for m-banking will reach 1.1 billion by the year 2015.
• In 2013, there will be nearly half a billion customers of MFS, including m-banking, mobile domestic person-to-person payments (i.e. money transfers) and international person-to-person payments.

Asia will be the key market for MFS, driven by initiatives to bank the unbanked and money transfers:

More than half of global MFS customers will be in Asia Pacific – Middle East and Africa is also expected to be important market – as mobile operators drive initiatives to bank the unbanked.
Asia-Pacific will emerge as the predominant MFS market in terms of customer base. In Middle East and Africa, the need to provide financial services to remote areas will be central to the growth of m-banking..

In developed nations m-banking will be driven by banks:

• GIA: In North America and Europe, m-banking is extension of online banking, as banks respond to growth of mobile Web. But in Europe, m-banking is in early stages, driven by convenience and value-add rather than revenue generation.
• Berg Insight: Evolving from traditional/online banking; m-banking will attract 115 million users in Europe and 86 million users in North America, by 2015.
• ABI: Banking institutions will be the major promoters of MFS, as it helps to increase customer ‘stickiness,’ help banks cut costs and automate, and most importantly, to reach the unbanked.
• ABI: In the US, Bank of America is a leader of m-banking. Launched in May 2007 it now has 1.5 million subscribers.
• ABI Research (July 2009) predicts that 170 million mobile subscribers worldwide will make domestic person-to-person payments (i.e. transfers) in 2011 – that's three times as many as those that will conduct traditional banking functions by mobile. This is driven by the enthusiasm for such services in developing world often from previously ‘unbanked’ people.
• Berg Insight predicts international money transfers will increasingly be done by mobile. By 2015 3–15 percent of transfers handled by agent networks today will be carried out by mobile handset (worth US$1.2–6.2 billion in revenues to the mobile industry).

Worldwide mobile payments (m-payments) are growing strongly, but will still only be worth 5 percent of ecommerce retail sales in 2014:

• Portio Research (March 2010) estimates there were 81.3 million people worldwide using their mobile device to make payments (including in-app payments, mobile ticketing and mobile coupons) in 2009. By the end of 2014, this is forecasted to rise to nearly 490 million (8 percent of mobile subscribers).
• The volume of m-payments i.e. face value of purchases and transactions was US$68.7 billion in 2009, rising to US$633.4 billion by end-2014.
• Juniper Research (April 2010) predicts that almost half of global mobile subscribers – both developed and developing nations - will pay by mobile for physical and digital goods and services (such as ticketing) by 2014. For example, in 2014, more than 500 million people will make m-payments on the Indian Sub Continent.
• The volume of m-payments (i.e. how much they spend) will be US$170 billion this year, growing to $630 billion by 2014. But this is only 5 percent of ecommerce retail sales.
• But IDC (May 2010) believes that in EMEA, m-payments will take off slower than m-banking, forecasting that less than 13 percent of mobile subscribers will be registered to use m-payments and volume of m-payments will be no more than $125 billion. Thus m-payments will take off slower than many industry observers hope, due to the complexity and set-up costs for retailers. However, strong growth in m-banking will lay the foundations for growth in mobile payments.

Shopping on the mobile Web, i.e. m-commerce will reach US$119 billion in 2015 predicts ABI Research that’s about 8 percent of the total e-commerce market:

• Today, Japan is king of m-commerce, where mobile Web shopping exceeded US$10 billion in 2009, making the US$1.2 billion bought in the US by mobile look trifling.
  For more insight on Japan, see this: guide to mobile in Japan
• M-commerce in Europe is expected to outpace the US by the end of 2010.
• Long-term growth in m-commerce will come from developing nations where mobile is virtually the only way to access the Internet.

More than 1 in 10 mobile subscribers will use m-ticketing in 2014, estimates Jupiter Research (April 2010):

• Services are developing fastest in the transport sector, particularly rail and metro companies and airlines, but m-ticketing is also used in concerts and movies.
• Hotspots for transport m-ticketing include Japan, Scandinavia and Austria.
• Airlines increasingly offer not only mobile boarding passes, but ticket booking and payment as well.
• But lack of standards has led to multiple ticket scheme environments which could impede growth.

M-coupons will dominate mobile retail marketing spend until 2013, according to Juniper Research (March 2010):

• Mobile retail will exceed US$12 billion by 2014 (mobile retail is defined as m-coupon redemption values, smart poster fees and advertising expenditure).
  The mobile retail sector would initially be dominated by coupons, but mobile advertising expenditure will exceed coupon redemption values by 2013