Articles

15.2.2011 Global mobile habits change

Consumers are pursuing an increasingly diverse range of mobile activities, covering both how they interact with each other and in response to advertising, a multimarket study has found. Deloitte, the consultancy, surveyed 30,454 mobile usersin 15 countries, a list including China, France, Germany, India, Japan, the UK and US. It reported that a majority of individuals in South Korea, the US, UK possessed more than one such device, and 10% had three. At present, 70% of people access the web through a broadband or dial-up connection, measured against a quarter doing so on cellular devices.

Text messages remained the most common type of non-voice wireless communication among UK smartphone users, as 90% send SMS every day. Meanwhile, 50% utilised email via their handsets with equal frequency, and 40% logged on to sites like Facebook and Twitter in this way. By contrast, 90% of the Chinese sample used SMS a minimum of once per 24 hours, standing at 50% concerning email, and 30% regarding social networks. For mobile broadband, two-thirds of respondents used this medium at home, and a third did so at work, when out-and-about and while commuting. In all, 70% of Chinese consumers regularly leveraged the same channel on the move as well as in static locations, almost doubling the totals yielded by South Africa, South Korea, the UK, US. Elsewhere, Deloitte argued the fact there are 5bn mobile subscribers, often exhibiting a personal attachment to these devices, and the graphical capabilities of smartphones should be attracting brands to advertise.

Overall, mobile advertising enjoyed a 6% response rate in the US, far above typical clickthrough levels for online display advertising. More broadly, 82% of panellists in South Korea, 80% in China, 55% in the US and 40% in the UK have positively reacted to mobile ads.

B.L. 15.2.2011