The Mobile Marketing Blog - TellMyCell

Horace Dediu On The fate Of Mobile Phone Brands

The always interesting ASYMCO blog has some great insights (with charts!) on the mobile phone industry. It's well known that Apple takes the lion's share of profits when it comes to mobile phones - but what about marketshare? More specifically, what can we learn by look at the past few years:

The violence with which new platforms have displaced incumbent mobile vendor fortunes continues to surprise.

• Nokia’s Symbian platform has gone from 47% share to 16% in three years
• Microsoft’s phone platforms have gone from 12% to 1%
• Other platforms have gone from 21% to zero
• Although far less dramatic, RIM’s decline from 17% to 12%  is causing acute pain and anxiety

This while entrants have grown share in spectacular fashion:

• Android from zero to 48% (A two year period)
• iOS from 2% to 19%
• Bada from zero to 4% (two quarters only)

Head over to ASYMCO for more charts and analysis.

Mobile Barcode Scanning Is Exploding

Scanbuy is out with a report on some huge growth trends in mobile barcode scanning:

Bar code scanning traffic increased more than 800 percent year over year, proving that consumers are willing to participate in promotions that are based on this technology.

The retail and media industries are generating some of the most scanned 2D bar code campaigns and other sectors should take note of what these types of brands are doing.

Additionally, 2D bar codes overtook 1D bar codes in the three-month period ending March 31. That is a strong sign that marketers, publishers and users are increasingly adopting 2D codes, like QR codes.

They've uncovered some interesting facts as well:

Scanbuy also shows a few fun facts in the report.  For example, Coke is the most scanned beverage product right now, Decision Points by George Bush is quite popular, and New Yorkers scan more than any other United States city.

Read more at Mobile Marketer

Don't Forget SMS - 75% Of Americans Still Don't Own A Smartphone!

The number of Americans with smartphones is growing - quickly - but don't confuse what the marketplace will look like in a couple of years with its current state. If you're thinking about launching a mobile marketing campaign only SMS can deliver 100% of consumers.

A whopping 60.7 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in October, up 14 percent from the preceding three month period, representing one out of every four mobile subscribers.

And if you're thinking about building an iPhone app, make sure to consider the data:

RIM was the leading mobile smartphone platform in the U.S. with 35.8 percent share of U.S. smartphone subscribers, followed by Apple with 24.6 percent share (up 0.8 percentage points).

Google Android saw another month of strong growth, rising 6.5 percentage points to capture 23.5 percent of smartphone subscribers.

Read more at Mobile Marketer.

Learn more about marketing with text messages at TellMyCell.

Read Our B2B Mobile Marketing Report

Are you a B2B marketer looking to go mobile? Check out our B2B Mobile Marketing Report for actionable information and advice.

B2C Marketers have already embraced mobile marketing – and numerous reports confirm spending in 2010 in excess of 3 billion dollars. So what’s a B2B marketer to do? Ignore a rapidly growing marketing channel? Our goal is to give you the information you need to build an executable B2B Mobile Marketing strategy.

Read The B2B Mobile Marketing Report Now.

New Trends Due To The Popularity Of The Mobile Phone

In recent polls, people have said that they would rather lose their wallets than their mobile phones. And now, with numerous smart phones on the market, people can do just about anything with the click of a few buttons. Here are some new growing trends due to the popularity of mobile phones.

1-Bargain Hunting: “Bargain hunting has become extremely popular with apps like RedLaser that allow users to scan product bar codes and discover its various prices at different retailers.”
2-Mobile Ticketing: “Mobile ticketing transactions are expected to exceed $100 billion world wide by 2012, according to a study released this month by Juniper Research.”
3-Marketing: “Text message marketing, where customers opt-in to receive news about deals or offer coupons, has been a widely adopted practice as it’s a direct way to engage with consumers that has a high likelihood of being read.”

Want to learn about more mobile trends? Read the entire article here.

To learn about mobile marketing, visit TellMyCell.

Memo To Marketers: Texting Is Best Medium To Reach Teens

Mobile Marketer reports on the results of a recent survey by ChaCha - teens and young adults were asked how they like to communicate. If you're relying on email, well, you're in big trouble:

The company polled about 1,500 teens and young adults on their favorite way to communicate. Sixty-eight percent responded that they prefer SMS, as opposed to 10 percent who chose mobile calls, 9 percent who opted for Facebook, 3 percent selected instant messaging and 0.3 percent liked email.

If you haven't launched your first SMS marketing campaign, maybe now would be a good team to learn a bit more :)

Read more about the study @ Mobile Marketer.

STAT: Smartphone Traffic Is Up 193% In A Year

If anyone doubts that smartphones are the future of mobile in the United States, consider this:

In this month's report, AdMob compares February 2009 with February 2010 in the three categories of mobile devices it serves. The bottom line:

• Smartphones (like the iPhone): Up 193% year over year in absolute terms as their share of AdMob's traffic in an expanding market grew from 35% to 48%
• Feature phones (like most Samsung, Nokia and LG phones): Up 31% in absolute terms as the mobile Internet space expanded. But their share of AdMob's traffic fell from 58% to 35%
• Mobile Internet devices (chiefly the iPod touch, but also connected game systems like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DSi): Up 403% in absolute terms as their traffic share grew from about 7% to 17%.

Check this graph out:

Read more @ Fortune Brainstorm Tech.

Forrester Reveals How To Calculate & Optimize Mobile ROI

Dan Butcher at Mobile Marketer picked up on an excellent research report put together by Forrester. Let's start with the lede:

“How do I justify the cost of building out our mobile services?” is a question that Forrester is fielding with increasing frequency. Here is the research firm’s advice to brands and marketers.

Why are they fielding the question so often lately? Because business owners know that 2010 is going to be another huge year for mobile. The questions are: How do you get started? How do you calculate the ROI on your mobile spend?

The first part is easy. You can learn more about mobile coupons, SMS marketing, and more at TellMyCell. See our pricing plans and try the service for free :)

So how do you calculate ROI? Read what Forrester has to say:

In the study, Forrester broke down the process of calculating the ROI of brands’ mobile initiatives into four key steps—identifying benefits, estimating the value of the benefits, calculating costs and building a model—to help justify the resources they need for mobile without getting lost in the details.

...

Calculating the ROI of emerging technologies and services that depend on consumer behavior is challenging. Some argue that it is part art and part science.

Ms. Ask provided various tips and pitfalls to avoid that should help marketers through the process of obtaining the resources they need to build their mobile services.

First, do not let ROI alone drive decision-making.

There are a wide range of qualitative reasons to invest in mobile services.

Learn more at Mobile Marketer. Ready to get started right now? Check out TellMyCell's SMS Marketing Plans & Pricing.

SMS Advertising To Reach $3.2 Billion Dollars In 2010

If J.P. Morgan's Imran Khan is correct, spending on SMS Advertising is going to lead the mobile marketing industry by a huge margin this year. The numbers are astounding:

Turn to 2010, and mobile advertising is, according to Kahn, forecast to grow 45 percent to $3.8 billion ($3.2 billion SMS advertising, $253 million mobile display, and $31 million mobile search.)

$3.2 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2009. That would 39% growth in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. So, does your business have a mobile marketing plan in place? No. Well the good news is, you can launch an SMS text messaging campaign on your own, at an affordable cost - even for the smallest of businesses.

Check out our SMS marketing plans at TellMyCell, which start at only $10 per month. Sign up in 60 seconds and try our service for free.

Wall Street Analysts Review The Google Nexus One's Prospects

The Wall Street Journal's Market Beat blog has rounded up some major Wall Street Analysts reactions to yesterday's unveiling of the Google Nexus One:

Susquehanna Financial: “As computing shifts from the PC to the phone, Google wants to remain an advertising leader. With its own phone, Google assures the device is Google-friendly, supporting its applications and advertising network, and optimized for Internet-usage. We note Google has had a history of developing competitive products with its customers, spurring their innovation and time to market (i.e., shopping, travel, and other vertical search efforts). By launching its own device while mobile advertising is still nascent, it has an opportunity to shape the future.”

Broadpoint.AmTech: Android head Andy Rubin indicated that while there is an opportunity for GOOG to make some margin on unit sales of the Nexus One, profit is not the primary objective of this effort. (We believe that GOOG would like to see its mobile hardware business grow into a large business, but will not state that as an objective for fear of damaging the Google brand if it does not work.)

Citigroup: We don’t believe selling SmartPhones will be a new, material source of revenue for the company. And since Google gives away the Android OS for free, we believe there is limited channel partner risk. In our opinion, Google developed its own SmartPhone to 1) Help accelerate mobile search, which will increase as SmartPhone penetration increases; 2) Showcase new technologies on the Android OS; and 3) Allow users to have more control over their own devices by customizing their mobile web and mobile apps (and not being governed by carrier or OEM restrictions) experiences.

Barclays Capital: “We believe Google could sell 5 - 6 million units in 2010 generating incremental revenue of $2.6 billion–$3.2 billion. We expect this revenue to be booked in Licensing and Other, but we are not updating our model at this time … However, given our assumption that Nexus One revenue would have low or no margins, our overall 2010 EBITDA margin for Google would come down from our 62.2% current estimate to ~55%.”

Goldman Sachs: “We do not view Google’s new device as a near-term threat to the iPhone 3GS as: 1) the price tag of the Nexus One does not seem aggressive enough to entice potential iPhone buyers;
2) Apple’s AppStore, which has over 115K applications and over 3 [billion] cumulative downloads to date, remains far ahead of competing app platforms; and 3) internationally, Nexus One’s availability seems limited at this point, with the unlocked version only available in three countries and Vodafone’s UK subsidy not starting for a few months.”

BofA Merrill: “We expect that Google will record $500+ in revenues per phone, and a low gross margin after subtracting the hardware costs. Therefore, hardware sales could be about EPS neutral (after software R&D), while additional search and applications activity could contribute to operating profit. A big potential side benefit for Google is that search and advertising on a Nexus One phone will not require revenue sharing with carriers or manufactures (such as Apple).”

Head over to the MarketBeat blog to learn more.