Most popular digital shopping tools
Why this matters: With all the buzz surrounding tactics like QR codes in the retail channel, it’s important to see what users area actually using and what content they are trying to connect to.
Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010: Highlights from comScore’s Mobile Year in Review
Below is a summary of what we see as the top ten overarching mobile trends of 2010:
- Phones Keep Getting ‘Smarter’: Smartphone adoption continues to increase across the U.S. and Europe, with most markets surpassing 25-30% market penetration for smartphones. The proliferation of new devices hitting the market in 2010 – including the iPhone 4, Blackberry Storm 2, and Motorola Droid X – has given consumers strong smartphone options across wireless carriers that is helping this segment of the market gain traction.
- iPhone Dominates Device Sales: The top two devices sold in 2010 in both the U.S. and EU5 were the iPhone 3GS and iPhone4, respectively. The #3 device in the U.S. was the Blackberry Curve, while the #3 device in the EU5 was the Nokia 5800 – XpressMusic.
- Android Storms Smartphone Market: 2010 saw Google’s Android platform grab hold in the mobile marketplace in a big way. In the U.S. alone, Android’s share of the smartphone market jumped from 5% to 29% in just one year, and it leapfrogged Apple to become the #2 smartphone platform after RIM. The number of different smartphones running Android certainly helped accelerate this trend, as did the desire for many consumers on Verizon to opt for a smartphone with a strong app economy.
- The App Ecosystem Blossoms: iPhone paved the way for the app ecosystem to emerge as developers create new and interesting apps for consumers every day. While most early apps were developed primarily for the iPhone, we are now seeing vibrant app ecosystems for Android, Blackberry and others.
- Email Shifts to the Mobile Phone: 2010 saw usage of PC-based email decline, particularly among teenagers, and it appears that much of that email activity is moving to people’s mobile devices. While Blackberry was once in a league of its own in terms of email functionality, many other devices have since caught up, and consumers are responding. Email now exists across media and mobile devices will continue to be a growing part of that trend.
- Location is Everything: Location-based check-in services like Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places all entered the digital lexicon in 2010 and have begun to gain consumer adoption. Other GPS-enabled apps like Google Maps and Garmin have also proved to be among the most popular and widely downloaded.
- Social Owns Mobile: Social media is one of the most prevalent and fastest-growing activities on the mobile phone. In the U.S. the number of mobile social media users grew 56% to lead all content categories, and in the UK Facebook accounts for 40% of all time spent on mobile sites.
- Mobile Commerce Readies for Lift-off: Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, has yet to gain traction in a significant way, but as smartphone adoption accelerates, technology has begun to facilitate mobile transactions. The next phase in m-commerce will be the emergence of the “mobile wallet” with direct payments coming from the mobile device, with Starbucks leading the way among merchants in installing the technology for such payments.
- iPad Redefines the Mobile Landscape: Apple’s blockbuster launch of the iPad in early 2010 set the stage for a completely new category of device to emerge, as several other tablets and e-readers hit the market by the end of the year. As a reasonably sophisticated computing device that is also mobile, the iPad has given new definition to the types of behaviors in which consumers will engage in the mobile environment. The iPad is also causing time-shifting in how and when consumers engage with content, with the iPad showing a high percentage of activity late at night as people wind down for the evening.
- Mobile Advertising Market Takes Shape: As mobile media consumption increases, it was only a matter of time before the mobile advertising boom began to take shape. Apple got into the act with the introduction of the iAd, which has already attracted many of the top brand advertisers like AT&T, Citi and Disney. Expect to see more and better quality ad units alongside mobile media content in 2011.
You can see from this selection of highlights that 2010 was another outstanding year, and this year promises to shine even brighter. If you haven’t already downloaded the 2010 Mobile Year in Review, you can do so here. We hope you enjoy and that it gives you a few things to think about on your way to success in 2011…
Top Mobile Activities in the U.S.
Text messaging lead as the top mobile activity with 68 percent of Americans texting in December 2010, while more than half took a photo with their mobile device (52.4 percent) and 39.5 percent of subscribers accessed news and information. Although application usage continued to grow in 2010, slightly more Americans (36.4 percent) used their mobile browser than accessed applications (34.4 percent).
Facebook Messages will make life harder for marketers, a report predicts.
A consumer who uses Facebook messages as his primary e-mail account would change their address to an @facebook.com address. Consumers’ changing their e-mail addresses is not a new phenomenon. In fact, last year 30% of consumers created or switched their e-mail address, Relevancy says.
But the group’s report, entitled “The Social Inbox: The Impact of Facebook Messages on Email Marketing,” found that 46% of consumers say they plan to sign up for a Facebook e-mail address. Moreover, 9% say they will use the Facebook address as their primary e-mail account. Those numbers are even more skewed for consumers 46 and younger. Relevancy based its finding on 1,001 survey respondents.
Because the because the number of e-mail accounts is set to rise, that means e-mail marketers will have to monitor who is actually responding to their messages to avoid sending marketing e-mail to dormant accounts, says David Daniels, The Relevancy Group’s CEO. Even before the Facebook Messages rollout, 32% of marketers cited e-mail churn as their largest challenge.
“It will be a challenge to continue to engage with your audience,” he says.
That means retailers will have to use a variety of metrics to identify which audience segments are regularly opening e-mail and clicking on the offers, and which may be showing signs of churn. Marketers also should use make sure that every consumer-facing part of the organization, such as bricks-and-mortar store locations and call centers, are collecting and confirming subscribers’ e-mail addresses.
Facebook Messages will provide consumers with two main messaging folders, and the main folder—the one consumers are most likely to check—will only contain communications from Facebook friends or friends of friends. All other messages, including retailers’ e-mail marketing messages, will be grouped in an Other folder, unless the consumer designates a retailer as a friend by clicking she Likes the merchant. That means retailers will have to find ways to motivate consumers to click that they Like the retailers’ brands, says Daniels.
“It’s important that retailers give consumers a reason to Like the brand, such as Facebook-exclusive discounts, that is a call to action,” he says.
Consumers’ shift to Facebook Messages could also reduce the amount of time consumers spend checking their e-mail accounts—even if they continue to maintain a different primary account, the report adds. Even if consumers use their Facebook e-mail address solely for personal communications, that likely means they will spend more time checking that account and less time checking their secondary account, which may lower response rates to retailers’ e-mail marketing campaigns.
Mobile Email Usage
Mobile email use is on the rise even as Web-based email use continues to decline, according to new data from comScore. The Web measurement firm found that traffic to Web-based email sites dropped 6% to 153 million in November 2010 compared to a year ago, while the number of people accessing email via mobile devices increased 36% to 70 million.
“From PCs to mobile devices, whether its email, social media, IM or texting, consumers have many ways to communicate and can do so at any time and in any place,” said Mark Donovan, senior vice president of mobile at comScore, in a statement. “The decline in Web-based email is a byproduct of these shifting dynamics and the increasing availability of on-demand communication options.”
In addition to shrinking the number of Web email users, engagement in the category has also dipped, with time spent falling 9%, and page views dropping 15%.
Young users — those between the ages of 12 and 17 — showed the sharpest decline in usage during the past year, with the number of visitors dropping 24%, and total minutes and page views falling 48% and 53%, respectively. The shift away from email among younger people has not been lost on sites such as Facebook, which emphasized newer communication tools like texting and chat over email in the revamped messaging system it unveiled in November.
“We don’t think a modern messaging system is going to be email,” said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the time. That view appears to be borne out by the latest comScore figures, although the firm notes that email is far from washed up. It remains one of the most popular Web activities, reaching 70% of the U.S. online population each month. Usage among older users 55 and over rose 15% in November from a year ago.
On the mobile side, the 36% overall audience growth was accompanied by a 40% gain in daily usage to 43.5 million users. Not surprisingly, younger age groups tend to be more active in mobile email. People 25 to 34 were 60% more likely to access email than an average mobile user, and those between 18 and 24 were 46% more likely to do so.
Of course, text-messaging is the communication channel of choice among teenagers. A study earlier this year from the Pew Research Center found more than half (54%) of American teens were text-messaging daily in September 2009, up from 38% eighteen months earlier. Overall, 72% of teens are now text-messagers.
When it comes to the growth of mobile email, comScore cited the proliferation of smartphones as a key factor. “In a relatively short period of time, adoption of mobile email has reached 78% of the smartphone population, which is very similar to the penetration of Web-based email among Internet users,” said Donovan. “These findings demonstrate just how quickly channel shifts can occur and why it’s now essential for media brands to have a strong presence in both arenas.”
