Of data that we have made public, we project almost exactly the same numbers as the MDA for users who have browsed or downloaded content. The number of mobile phone subsribers aged 13 years and above who have browsed is 9.73m in Sept, out of the total number of mobile phone subscribers of 43.5m (not 60m).

You can find lots of demographic data in the M:Metrics Q3 Quarterly Briefings that give a view on the state of the market:

http://brighttalk.com/event/EventConnect/0aa1883c64-191-intro

Please email irotondo@mmetrics.com if you would like to register for the Q4 06 Quarterly briefing on the 6&7th Feb 07.

Also thanks to Amir for calling our data on people sending a text message in response to an off-mobile (TV, Radio etc..) advert “optimistic” – we have often been accused of being pessimistic so nice to have some balance in the criticism.

From the UK perspective, I can give a “bottom” number for % of people who have browsed mobile web (WAP). Bango has seen in excess of 6 million unique UK users passing through our systems in the last 3 years. Since there are about 60 million subscribers and we don’t see all mobile internet users (yet …)
I’d use 10% as a bottom number.

question is when do we hitl the inflection point?

these numbers and adoption also coralate to SMS wap-push usage which also
lags (at least for the US market that is).

My dos pesos …

Operators and content providers are hungry for this type of information and a better understanding of how those differences translate into usage and advertising impression/click-through rate advantages. The MMA (www.mmaglobal.com) is going to be coming out with some case studies and information at their general meeting in LA next week. Perhaps that will offer some more specifics and guidance for comapnies to consider when evaluating this market.

Here’s a few for starters:
1) O2 recently sent me APN settings for my new contract phone. If only they had spotted that I had been using mobile data every day for weeks prior to receiving the settings.

BIG ASK OF MOBILE OPERATORS. Please see who has not accessed mobile data and send them all APN settings.

2) Data charges are tough to understand. Just try calling your MO and ask them “How much am I paying to access the Internet on my mobile?” Its so difficult that the operators own call centre and retail staff don’t know. And how is the consumer supposed to translate bytes, Kb and megabytes into everyday mobile internet use?

BIG ASK OF MOBILE OPERATORS. Make mobile data charges easier to understand. And because it is difficult to answer “How long is a piece of string?” make it really simple. Tell the user how much a day, week, month it will cost them.

3) Mobile applications either user HTTP or TCP data to access the Internet. Setting up the mobile handsets to differentiate between a Java and a HTTP session is complex. Some operators such as T-Mobile and Orange have one APN setting for HTTP and TCP data. Hoorah!

BIG ASK OF MOBILE OPERATORS. One APN setting please for all internet connections – HTTP and WAP (Hint. it will lower your support costs and increase your data usage so might be a good thing!)

4) Volumes of urban myth and negative PR surround mobile data and Internet use.
BIG ASK OF MOBILE OPERATORS. Work with us to rebuild consumer confidence through education, free data days, maybe even preload applications on the handsets that leave your stores and distribution centres.

Remember this is a WIN-WIN-WIN situation. Your consumer wins, the mobile industry wins and the mobile operator ARPU wins!

Anymore for anymore?

David

Of course, on the pages of weblogs like this one, we have a very public ongoing debate about the rifts between licensing agreements, data tariffs, technologies and user interfaces.

And the research firms are producing reports outlining actual uptake. Last year, Gartner Group found that 3/4 (or more) of users with Wi-Fi devices don’t actually use Wi-Fi while traveling. Recently, In-Stat found that even though the smartphone sales are increasing, IT departments are unaware that Java applications can run on (lesser) regular mobile telephones, and users still carry a second mobile for voice calls.

Findings like these are both stunning and disappointing, indicating industry-wide failures in product definition and service introduction. We have failed to understand both market and product requirements, and we still don’t understand what users actually want. The reasons for this are myriad, and there is plenty of blame to go around.

I prefer to identify the over-MBA-ification of the business world which applies an ever-reductionist set of analytical models to virtually every decision to the point where every business decision is simultaneously logical, considered, analyzed and meaningless. This abstracted, cool and rational decision making results in a few innovations and a large swath of horribly-misguided products and services. It gives us mobile browsers that don’t work. It gives us soft buttons that keep taking us to services not worth paying for. And it gives us an ongoing love-hate relationship with devices and wireless operators.

From a business IT perspective, mobile data is a disaster, and organizations like MDA are incapable of addressing this topic purely by design. The reason is simple, membership organizations are designed to serve classes of members, and it takes managerial vision to gain support and develop sufficient budgets to actively involve the “user” community.

MDA management continues to sweep the disappointing results under the proverbial rug. Instead of leading a meaningful debate about what must happen, the focus is on keeping the vendors happy and membership dues incoming. While this is positive for organizational persistence, it quashes virtually all legitimacy with the supposed “user” groups the organization purports to encourage and represent.

some very good points. WAP has always been frustrating to pitch as we can’t find definitive answers to exactly the questions you posed. We keep seeing the X billion page views but this has no real meanings for us or to most of our clients. It just tells me that the operators are trying to disguise the numbers as they are not that great.

Usually when I pitch to clients or do seminars I ask the audiance to do their own research. Just look around them next time they are on a bus or at the pub. How many people have a mobile (usually 100 %), how many know how to send and receive a text message (usually 100 %) and how many know how to browse WAP (usually 20 -30 %).

As you say statistics can be interpreted any way you look at them but just by asking a few friends etc one can get a feel of the mobile market (SMS is king!). This piece of research: http://www.mmetrics.com/press/PressRelease.aspx?article=20061003-sms-shorttext

is interesting. It suggests that 15 % use WAP within the last month. The number I find hard to take is that over 20 % of consumers in the UK have responded to an ad and close to 30 % in Spain. This seems high but great news for the industry. Sometimes I sense that the people doing research and releasing figures have it in their interest to be optimistic (seems good to me!).

Amir
amir (at) txtfo (dot)com
44 7970 49 6624

If we’d only have similar data from more countries.