The Big Picture "All the Stats" Total View to Mobile Industry, 2010 Edition

Its been our custom to give a review of the mobile industry at the start of the year, usually before the big Mobile World Congress conferece in Barcelona. I struggle to come up with 'interesting' ways to discuss the stats, but lets try once again. This is indeed a giant, complex and most dynamic industry. I am sorry, for me to be reasonably comprehensive, this blog cannot be brief. But consider it the only one place you need to come to during 2010 to find all the numbers. To paraphrase Woody Allen, All the facts you wanted to know about mobile (but were afraid to ask).

4.6 BILLION SUBSCRIPTIONS

The mobile industry has now 4.6 Billion active subscriptions. Note that the planet as 6.8 Billion people. And while most in the Industrialized World have TV sets, PCs and internet access - those are not normal for most people on the planet. So for contrast - on the planet there are 1.2 Billion PCs of any kind including netbooks; 1.6 Billion TV sets, 1.7 Billion Internet users (including those who access at an internet cafe, or via a mobile phone); and 3.9 Billion FM radio receivers. But 4.6 Billion mobile phone subscriptions. A mobile phone account for 68% of the planet already!

Now, not all subscriptions are actual unique users. The total number of unique users is 3.4 Billion people ie exactly now half of the planet. About 35% of those unique users have two or more subscriptions. And many but not all who have two accounts also have two phones. So the total number of actual mobile phone handsets in use is 3.9 Billion. In Eastern Europe already 81% of unique mobile phone users have more than one account. In Africa only 17% of subscribers have two or more accounts.

A few specific details - there are about 200 million people beyond the 3.4 Billion unique users who live in poor households where they share a phone, such as often in Africa for example. Out of the 3.9 Billion handsets in use, about 375 million are second-hand phones (as in many countries of the Emerging World) or hand-me-down phones (as often with younger teenagers and children). And out of the 4.6 Billion subcriptions 200 million are not actually used by humans, but are 'telematics' subscriptions connecting machines, remote metering etc. In the year of the global economic crisis, the mobile industry grew 15% more paying subscriptions. This industry is not just healthy and robust, it is positively a powerhouse.

New Service example. Let me give you one example service. In many parts of the Emerging World there are poor people living in villages where there is no traditional media at all. No TV coverage, no newspapers, no internet, no fixed landline and even no FM radio coverage. But increasingly there is mobile telecoms ie cellular telecoms reach. For example out of the Billion people of India, about 200 million live in such villages where there is no FM radio coverage even, but there is cellular mobile phone reach. What happens? These people are poor but not without any funds. And they have almost no 'media' to entertain them at evenings. But they are human, they still enjoy music and drama and sports and news. How can they get it? Through their mobile phones of course. In India there are countless mobile phone premium voice services (like in Western markets we have sex phone lines) which deliver news, sports scores, pop music. The latest Bollywood musical hits and the scores or even live game broadcasts of Cricket games etc. This type of new 'mobile radio' deliveres as much income in India as the total radio industry of India. Amazing.

Since 2008, mobile has become the most widely spread technology on the planet. The phone is also the most commonly used clock, as many abandon wristwatches; it is the most used alarm clock; there are three times as many cameraphones in use today than any kind of stand-alone camera, digital or film-based - ever manufactured. More people have an MP3 player on their phone today than own any kind of musicplayer including iPods and home CD players.

EARNS 1.1 TRILLION DOLLARS IN ANNUAL REVENUES

The mobile industry is a global giant which generated 1.07 Trillion (1,070 Billion) dollars in annual revenues last year. Compare that with 'major' industries such as print (newspapers, magazines & books) or Television or advertising or the computer industry - these are all industries roughly speaking worth only half a Trillion dollars. The fixed landline phone industry is also worth in that group. Only a few global industries earn a Trillion dollars such as automobiles, food, construction and military spending. And since 2008 also mobile telecoms.

Of the 1.07 Trillion dollars, 865 Billion dollars is service revenues and 205 Billion is hardware. The service revenues split so that 615 Billion dollars is voice call revenue; 153 Billion dollars is mobile messaging revenue; and 98 Billion dollars is non-messaging 'mobile data' revenues. Of the hardware income, 160 Billion dollars is handset sales and 45 Billion dollars is network infrastructure. Of the mobile messaging 113 B dollars is earned by SMS text messaging and 29 Billion dollars by MMS messaging. The mobile data revenues (including messaging) are now larger at 253 Billion dollars than all internet-related revenues including advertising, content revenues, and access fees (broadband and dial-up) added together.

These numbers will become numbing very fast. So a bit of context. There are 920 million people who own and operate a car on the planet, thus paying for petrol and insurance and car maintenance regularly. There are 950 million people who watch multi-channel TV like cable TV or satellite TV and a vast majority of those pay to do so. There are about 1.15 Billion people with a landline phone account. About 1.2 Billion PC owners pay for an internet access (about half now on broadband). There are about 1.7 Billion households on the planet, so in most cases but not all, those involve rents, mortgages, electricity utility bills etc. But there are 4.6 Billion paid subscriptions to mobile telecoms. You get the picture. Mobile is the giant among lilliputs. 

The average mobile phone user when counted as total subscriptions on the planet pays 15.70 dollars per month for mobile telecoms services.That ranges from 47 dollars per month in North America to 7 dollars per month in countries of Developing parts of Asia. This number is somewhat misleadingly called the "ARPU" (Average Revenue Per User) but should be called "Average Revenue Per Subscription". When re-calculated and adjusted for unique users, the nominal 15.70 dollars per month becomes a real average monthly spending per "unique users" at 21.30 dollars per month on a worldwide average. The average mobile phone subscriber on the planet spends 2.95 dollars per month on mobile messaging and 1.75 dollars per month on non-messaging mobile data services. Data services overall account for 29% of all mobile phone service revenues. 

Service example. The internet is struggling to discover ways to make money, they essentially only can beg for some subscription revenues or hope to build 'eyeballs' to try to monetize on advertising. The mobile services industry has invented four newer business models and thus has six, as I explain in my recent books. Consider social networks. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, etc, how can they earn money? Apart from some advertising income they have millions of users but make pitifully little money if any. Meanwhile mobile social networks from Itsmy out of Germany, Flirtomatic out of the UK, Cyworld out of South Korea, Frenclub out of Malaysia, Mixi, Mobagetown and Gree out of Japan etc - these all make money. Tons and tons and tons of money. Now think of this. All three Japanese mobile social networks, Mixi, Mobagetown and Gree - have similar modern new business models with no or modest subscription fees, and advertising accounts for a small minor part of their total income. Yet all three are making between 200 and 400 million dollars annual in revenues and each of the three generates profits - and get this - all three are listed on the Japanese stock market! That is a business that has become 'mature' enough if it is accepted by the stock market. None of that 'new economy' nonsense of 'build enough of an audience but don't know how to monetize it' nonsense.

The mobile telecoms industry was launched in Japan by NTT in 1979 (the industry was not launched by Motorola in 1983). In only 29 years the global mobile telecoms industry breached the Trillion dollar annual sales level, becoming the fastest-growing Trillion dollar industry of all time, and doing it so rapidly, odds are this record will stand for centuries. And even in the time of the economic downturn, the mobile industry grew 7% in revenues.

SOLD 1.1B NEW HANDSETS

The industry sells over a Billion new handsets every year. Last year it sold 1.13 Billion new mobile phones. This compares with 300 million new TV sets, 270 million new PCs of any kind including netbooks, and 250 million DVD players. Videogame consoles, MP3 players, eBook readers, digital cameras etc sell in far smaller numbers. No other consumer electronics comes even close to mobile. The average replacement cycle for mobile phones, at 17 months, is also far shorter than for other digital technologies.

The 3.9 Billion phones in use have rapidly gained enormous capabilities. 100% of the installed base of mobile phones are able to receive SMS text messages. 95% of all phones have some kind of browser, whether a 'real' xTML browser of a more limited WAP browser. 93% of all phones in use have a color screen. 80% of all phones in use can receive MMS multimedia messages. 73% of all phones in use are cameraphones. 71% of all phones have a modern xTML web browser. Over half of all phones in use today have bluetooth, a media player; and can accept downloads ie have Java or Brew. 44% have a memory card slot, 29% are 3G high speed data phones or faster and 19% have WiFi. Only 13% of the installed base of mobile phones in use are smartphones worldwide.

If we look only at smartphones, then in 2009 the Nokia brand formed 39% of all new smartphones sold. RIM and its Blackberry smartphones sold 21%. Apple's iPhone achieved 15% of new smartphone sales in 2009. HTC was fourth biggest selling 5% and Fujitsu fifth biggest selling 4% of all smartphones. All other of over two dozen brands of smartphones including Samsung, SonyEricsson, LG, Google, Motorola, Palm, etc sold a combined 16%. Of the installed base of smartphones, Symbian branded smartphones (about a dozen brands but mostly Nokia) account for 56% of all smartphones in use on the planet. Blackberry smartphones are the second most common type by operating system, with 16%. Apple's iPhone OS/X forms 8% of all smartphones in use. Microsoft's Windows Mobile (used by over a dozen manufacturers but predominantly HTC brand) control 7% of all smartphones in use. All other smartphone operating systems such as Linux Mobile, Palm, Google Android, Nokia Maemo etc form the rest at 13% of all smartphones in use.

Service example. While the US focused IT and financial press obsess about 'apps stores' the mobile handset market is very dynamic and innovative and can provide great opportunities for innovation. And it does not require 'apps' sold to consumers to be able to capitalize on mobile. Take basic SMS alerts. All mobile phones on the planet can accept text messages. So we can build alerts services around those. So hospitals in Britain will send reminders when you have your doctor's appointment. Dentists in Finland will let you take cancelled appointments on a first-come-first-served basis. Surf cams in South Africa and Australia will send you surfing alerts with links to the surf cam so you can also use your phone to view the beach if you feel like surfing. Here in Hong Kong the government sent a warning to all residents when they discovered the first case of swine flu, through SMS to every phone.

Airlines all over the world send alerts if you are a registered frequent flier and your next flight is delayed, so you don't need to come to the airport and wait for hours there. I was just in Norway and met with one of the most innovative airlines, Norwegian, which was the world's first airline to do the full air passenger mobile ticketing solution - from selling your ticket on your phone, to the check-in via phone to the boarding pass on your phone screen - imagine how much this saves money for the discount airline. Norwegian the airline is so thrilled with their mobile telecoms experience that they are launching their own... mobile phone service in Norway. Like I say, this industry is a 'magical money-making machine' and it is a gateway for other industries to make money or deliver customer excellence. And while we are on those SMS alerts, think of these. In South Korea the mobile phone 'love detector' will monitor tension in the person on the voice call and send an alert to you telling you if your partner is telling the truth and if there is still romance in that person's voice... Yes, its getting that silly now. And in Japan, Agrihouse introduced a service that lets your plants send you alerts when they need to be watered. We can make millions without the silly apps stores.

Now yes, last year for the first time ever, actual mobile phone sales levels dipped with this economic downturn, by 5%. But even as the economy crashed last year, smartphone sales grew 9%

3.6 BILLION SMS TEXT MESSAGING USERS

Mobile phone messaging using SMS text messaging is the most widely used data application on the planet. There are 3 times as many active users of SMS as there are total number of personal computers on the planet. The total active user base of SMS is more than 2.5 times larger than the total unique user base of email. At 3.6 Billion active users, SMS text messaging is now used by 78% of all mobile phone subscribers - and more amazingly, SMS is used now by 53% of the total population of planet Earth. The planet sent 4.6 Trillion SMS text messages last year, which is 12.6 Billion messages per day (two SMS for every live person on the planet per day), or 8.7 million messages every minute. At 2.5 US cents per SMS cost on average globally, the SMS industry earns another million dollars every five minutes.

The second most used data application on the planet is not Google search or Facebook or email or any internet service. It is MMS multimedia messaging, often mistakenly thought of as only 'picture messaging'. MMS is a powerful media channel to deliver pictures, videos, sounds, text - and advertising - with a potential reach of 3.1 Billion people. That is a reach almost exactly twice the total reach of television. Already 1.7 Billion people - 37% of all mobile subscribers - are active users of MMS multimedia messaging, which is over three times the total daily circulations of all newspapers printed around the world. MMS is often mistakenly thought of as a 'failure' but delivers 29 Billion dollars of revenues globally - which makes it bigger than the global music industry or total Hollywood box office revenues worldwide. Hardly a 'failure'. MMS revenues grew 12% in 2009 while the global economy was in crisis.

Service example. British AQA Any Question Answered does just what it says in the title. They are a paid SMS based service that will answer any question. You have your sports argument at a pub, send the question to AQA and get your answer. Or you need to know what is the height of the second tallest mountain or whatever, they have it. But the users will of course try to stump the service asking those eternal questions like what happens if your vehicle is travelling at the speed of light and you turn on your headlights or which tastes better, bread that is cut in triangles or bread that is cut in squares etc. And more than that, when drunken young adults have a laugh at the pub, then they send in the questions like asking AQA which of the three girls sitting with the boys at the table is the sexiest. Obviously AQA won't know these girls, yet they will answer. And their answers are often very funny and entertaining. Each answer is free, each question costs one UK pound. Easy. And this model is viable you ask? Anyone could just Google for answers? Yes, this makes oodles of money because it is entertaining as well as informative. 4 Million pounds per year (7 million dollars) in revenues out of silly answers to stupid questions. If the same level happened in America, thats about 35 million dollars in income. You still think SMS is not for you?

The most used data application on the planet became the fastest-ever industry to reach 100 Billion dollars in annual revenues in only 16 years. And grew users, services and revenues in 2009, a year of economic crisis. MMS is following on the heels of SMS hitting 29 Billion dollars in only 9 years and yes, MMS also grew users, services and revenues this past year.

MORE INTERNET USERS ON MOBILE THAN ON PERSONAL COMPUTERS

The transition point has been passed and as we heard Nokia CEO say a few weeks ago, today there are more people who access browser-based services on a mobile phone than on a personal computer. Out of all 1.7 Billion internet users today, there are only 400 million who never use a mobile phone and only access on a PC. 800 million use both a PC and a mobile phone to access the internet. And 500 million people today never use a PC to access the web and only use a phone. In numerous populous Emerging World countries the majority of internet access is from mobile such as in India, South Africa, Bangladesh, Russia etc. In many very advanced Industrialized World countries of high broadband penetration the same phenomenon has happened such as in Japan, Sweden, South Korea and Taiwan where also more people access the internet on a phone than on a PC. Thus the total PC based internet user base is now 1.2 Billion people but the mobile phone based internet user number is 1.3 Billion people. Note that these numbers include any browser services including WAP (often called 'mobile internet' as distinct from the 'real internet' using xTML web browsers on mobile phones)

Service example. Take Flirtomatic from the UK. If you have a social networking site on the legacy PC based internet, like say Facebook or YouTube or MySpace that is not making profits, and you then release that same service on 'the real internet on mobile' say on a smartphone like an iPhone, on an 'all you can eat' data plan; there is no magic there, suddenly turning a free service into a money-maker. No. Trying to put the 6th mass medium ie the legacy PC internet onto a 7th mass medium mobile phone is as dumb as trying to put a 'real horse' in to a car (or to use a media example, as silly as using your TV to listen to radio). We have a FAR MORE POWERFUL engine in the car than the horse, and we have a FAR MORE POWERFUL engine in the mobile, called the 'mobile internet' (a very bad term, by the way). But mobile has 8 unique abilities that cannot be replicated on any of the legacy 6 mass media.

So Flirtomatic, another 'social networking' service out of the UK. Flirtomatic was launched as an integrated service on both the legacy PC internet and the 'mobile internet'. So in essence, Flirtomatic on mobile is a 'WAP' service. And before you complain for one second that 'everybody knows WAP is crap' - stop and consider this. Flirtomatic has four separate revenue streams not the two on the legacy PC internet. And Flirtomatic abandoned its subscription as 'unnecessary' in 2007 ! and Flirtomatic earns less than a quarter of its income from advertising. Their other three revenue streams? Personalization, virtual gifts, and 'ego services'. Already in four countries, they have passed 2 million subscribers in Britain. And most importantly, Flirtomatic is profitable. How many internet-based social networks can say that? And they did it without 'the real internet in your pocket' they did it on WAP. Take that to your bank.

MOBILE PREMIUM CONTENT AND SERVICES WORTH 98 BILLION DOLLARS

The total premium data revenues on mobile data services, after removing mobile messaging, are worth 98 Billion dollars. Only 5.9 Billion dollars of that total is advertising revenue. So paid content and services on non-messaging mobile services total 92 Billion dollars worldwide. That number is four times as much as all paid content revenues on the legacy PC based internet. Meanwhile mobile advertising revenues grew 85% in 2009, a year when the global economy 'cratered' to quote a former US presidential candidate. Many in the 'real' media industries tend to dismiss mobile content as silly frivolous fringes of the content world, like the Crazy Frog ringing tone for example (that was the first pure ringing tone to become number 1 on the British weekly pop music charts five years ago).

So first some market realities. Basic 'ploink-ploink' ringing tones may be 'minimalist' and modest in their musical range, and short in duration, but understand their economic power. The total Apple iTunes music store - the world's biggest online digital music store - earns under 2 Billion dollars of revenues in its music sales annually. Basic ringing tones - I am not talking of 'truetones' or real samples or real music, the very basic simple monophonic tunes you hear random people have on their phones when you walk on the street - basic ringing tones earned 5 Billion dollars of revenues in 2008. More than 2.5x more than all of iTunes. And I have not even started with 'Ringback' tones - also today bigger than all of iTunes - or any more advanced forms of mobile music styles such as Realtones/Truetones; and full MP3 track downloads, and music streaming services, and mobile music videos, and welcoming tunes, and background tunes, and mood music, and music gifting and music recognition and yes alas, the mobile karaoke service. Each of those is a real service earning millions. Music recognition (Shazam, if you know the brand) earned 100 million dollars last year out of 35 million paying customers. Music on mobile is worth 13.9 Billion dollars in 2009. When you remove mobile music, the rest of the global music industry is worth only 17 Billion dollars. Mobile forms of revenues account for 45% of all music spending by consumers on the planet!

And its not just music. News services on mobile deliver 9.8 Billion dollars annually. Videogaming on mobile is even bigger at 11.6 Billion dollars. And while few actually watch full TV episodes on mobile (millions do, but mostly the youth) the real money out of 'mobile TV and video related services' is of course in the SMS-to-TV service opportunity - think voting for American Idol or the Eurovision Song Contest - Total TV and video services including SMS voting on TV are worth.... 14 Billion dollars in 2009. How much is YouTube contributing to the income of NBC or Fox or HBO or Disney or the BBC? Not much. But mobile video and related services including SMS votes - deliver already 4% of the total worldwide TV industry revenues. Thats exactly the same level as ringing tones were early in the previous decade.

Service example. The Real Madrid soccer/football team launched a mobile service version of their fan club. It includes just about anything you could hope for as a fan, from game scores and updates, to player biographies and stats, to ticketing, to sales of merchandise like jerseys etc. They have signed up 100,000 fans to the service and it earns... 14 Million Euros per year (21 million dollars). Mobile is a magical money-making machine!

MOBILE ADVERTISING GREW 85% LAST YEAR AS ECONOMY CRASHED

So the last item I want to discuss is mobile advertising. mAd as I like to call it, is a tiny part of the big picture of mobile, but is of great interest in particular last year after the news that Google bought Admob. So the story? There has been advertising on mobile phones for a decade since first introduced in Finland. Today 1.8 Billion people on the planet have received ads on their phone and in leading countries like Spain, Japan and South Africa, between 70% and 90% of mobile phone owners receive ads on them.

Early mobile ads were horrid bastardized copies of legacy PC internet concepts, like banner ads and spam SMS. Then there were several further moronic ideas of old intrusive interruptive ad models force-fed to mobile like pre-roll ads for video and location-based ads. I was there from the start, literally chairing the world's first conference on mobile advertising and have witnessed the slow painful growth of this magnificent opportunity. As an ad channel, every single one of 4.6 mobile phone subscriptions can be used to deliver the simplest sound and basic text message based advertising. And over 90% of them can receive basic WAP oriented 'mobile internet' (not real internet) advertising and over 80% can receive very advanced multimedia ads on video, music and images, using MMS as the ad platform. Mobile is by far - by a country mile - larger in reach than any other media and these four methods - voice, SMS, WAP and MMS - are the only viable 'mass market' ad propositions. Don't fall for any snake-oil slaes pitches about some silly iPhone App that only 3% of the nation can even receive and a tiny fraction of iPhone users would actually download.

For the media owners, only mobile can identify every consumer (almost every one but far more than on any other platform). And for brands, mobile can result in direct call-to-action including click-to-pay, even if the customer does not own a credit card or Paypal account. Mobile is a magnificent couponing medium as well as a ticketing system. And most importantly for any legacy media from the 1st mass medium print, to the 6th mass medium the PC based internet - only mobile is present when any other media is consumed. Thus mobile can enhance media consumption on other platforms - making a one-way commuciation like radio or a billboard suddenly interacive - and indeed, to collect revenues for a legacy media like TV does with American Idol or the intenet does with say the childrens virtual playground Habbo Hotel (yet another example of making tons of profits on mobile, while giving the internet version for free. Habbo and its owner Sulake of Finland invented the whole premium mobile payment model for internet media content. They became profitable early in the last decade. How many other totally free internet services do you know that are profitable? Mobile is the magical money-making machine).

It took the mobile advertising industry much of the decade to discover that mobile has unique abilities (as I now teach in my workshops, a total of 8 unique abilities). Using those, far more advanced mobile ad models are being developed, that are truly personal; that are not just 'interactive' but actually 'engagement marketing' and ones that often reward recepients if they spread the ads via viral marketing. When using the most modern 'engagement marketing' methods, hundreds and even thousands of consecutive mobile ad campaigns by the giants of the ad industry, Coca Cola, Nike, Mastercard, Ford, L'Oreal etc etc etc - have achieved consistent response rates from 20% in the USA to 25% in the UK to 30% in Slovenia to 40% in Japan. Consistent response rates (not just click-through rates) and across thousands of campaigns - but not as stupid banner ads or spam SMS or pre-roll ads or location-based spam; but rather by using 'engagement marketing' methods. On the internet the average 'click-through rate' (an inferior metric than response rate) is 0.2%. Thus modern intelligent mobile ad campaings, when using 'engagement marketing' methods, deliver yields of not ten times better - but indeed well in excess of 100 times better results than the internet. Consistently - not an early curiosity peak, consistently across thounsands of campaigns on four continents.

As these newer better engement marketing methods are being discovered, learned, spread and utilized, mobile advertising grew enormously last year, from 3.1 Billion dollars to 5.9 Billion dollars - a mind-boggling 85% growth rate in a year when the overall economy crashed, and all advertising budgets were severely slashed, and all non-digital advertising budgest were decimated and even internet advertising was flat for the year. But mobile exploded by 85% growth.

Service example. There is no better way to illustrate this than a basic simple MMS based ad campaign out of Germany that was pure 'engagement marketing' and deserves every award it is entered for. Not by a high tech digital media brand, this was BMW. They used a very clever, tightly targeted and truly personalized ad campaign using MMS to sell winter tyres in Germany. They sent a personalized picture message and offer to German owners of BMW who had bought their car the previous year during the summer months and thus very likely did not own winter tyres. The ads were customized so, that each BMW owner received a frontal view of their own model of car (3 series, 5 series etc) in the right color! So each recepient felt it was 'my car'. Then they suggested a winter tyre and showed what it looked like on that car, and had a link to the BMW mobile web (ie WAP) site with many alternate tyres so the owner could also scroll through alternatives and compare. And finally, the MMS message suggested a nearby registered BMW dealer or service center with the tyres in stock to do the installation. And the best part - they waited with the campaign ready to run, until the day the first snow started to fall in Germany.

The total campaign cost less than 120,000 dollars to run including creative work and air time costs of the MMS messages. The campaign generated a 30% conversion rate (ie not just that consumers clicked on the ads, 30% of the recepients came to a BMW dealer to buy tyres and often also wheel rims). The campaign generated bonus income for BMW that was measured and directly identified to the MMS campaign - worth 45 Million dollars. BMW will never again try to sell tyres the old-fashioned way on newspaper ads and magazine ads and billboards and TV ads...

Mobile is the way to go if you use engagement marketing methods. Mobile advertising will roughly double again in revenues this year and will end up the biggest ad platform of the planet, bigger than the internet, or print ads or radio or even television before this decade is done. Mark my words. As to the year when all ad industry funds vanished due to the economy but mobile ads were so compelling that the brands showered their money on mobile, it grew yes 85% last year.

You may reference any info in this blog and please feel free to link here if you blog about these numbers. The source for all in this blog unless separately mentioned, is TomiAhonen Almanac 2010.

I HAVE MORE INFO FOR YOU

So there. The industry review for 2010. The big picture. Thanks for visiting our site and you may want to bookmark this page or send your colleagues to read it and if you write a blog, feel free to use stats and examples from here and link to this page.

As is my mantra (my personal motto is as I write in all of my books, and print on my business cards, my quotation:) "In a connected age, sharing information is power" - so I will now share one more item with you, a gift to you in fact.

If you would like to have in your pocket, on your smartphone, on your laptop, or printed out in your documents, a simple two page summary of all of these numbers and many many more, I have complied my first ever mobile industry 'Cheat Sheet'. Yes, it has all the numbers of the industry from subscriber numbers, to industry revenues by major categories, to the big mobile industry revenue cateogries, to phone market shares and smartphone market shares, to the phone capabiliies of the installed base globally, to service usage across the major service categories, to the digital divide. and for most data it has this year's number and last year's number and the growth rate. And yes, of course the document is free. And yes, its an unrestricted pdf file that you may freely forward and quote from at length. It is directly taken from the brand new 2010 edition of the TomiAhonen Almanac, an industry statistical resource that is most trusted and referenced the world over. You can receive your copy of the Cheat Sheet: Mobile Industry Numbers 2010 if you send me an email to tomi at tomiahonen dot com and I will send you the two page pdf file by return email.

FURTHER ARTICLES? DEPENDS ON YOUR INTEREST

I have several deep, fact-filled and business-oriented articles about the industry on this blog that may be of interest. So consider what you really want to know next.

If you are interested in the handsets and smartphones, I analyze thetotal marketshares for the full year 2009 for the top 10 handset makers, plus smartphones and operating systems in this 2009 phone market view. And if you would like my insider view to how the smartphone market will evolve this year (such as why Samsung can grow to 3x its size but HTC, Motorola, Google, Apple and RIM cannot) here is the Smartphones Bloodbath 2010. And if you really want to understand what it takes to gain market share in smartphones, this is what determines who wins in smartphones.

If you want to understand the new innovative business models of mobile, I discussed all six including the two legacy business models copied from the PC based internet and the four new models introduced in the past few years, at this blog:the 6 ways to make money in mobile

If you are interested in the Digital Divide, I have a comprehensive view to it here.

If you would like to understand more about the 8 unique abilities, the first 7 are explained here and the 8th ability is here or how the phone has evolved from a single-purpose device to one with 10 abilities, follow the links.

If you are from advertising and would like to understand what can be better than banner ads and what kind of measures we should use, I also dig deep into the successful campaign metrics and explain why traditional ad metrics like audience reach are meaningless in mobile.

If you want to understand SMS text messaging, I explained the ins and outs of the biggest data application on the planet last year at this blog

If you have heard that I am 'against' apps stores, then my views of why the Apps Stores are Totally Irrelevant Today are here, and then after that please read why I do think Apps are Good for the industry in the long run.

I am also famous for once believing passionately into the big promise of location-based services, but have changed my mind and now believe they are a massive waste of effort that are a bad choice for investment or service development. I may be wrong, I may be right - but I have once believed in them, perhaps my 'change of mind' carries more weight than those who blindly believe in them. Read this to understand the Elusive Pot of Gold.

And there are still many who have somehow gotten the impression that I hate Apple. If that is what you think, why not read this 'definitive' prediction of how important the iPhone would become - written before the first iPhone had been sold, in Two Eras: Age Before iPhone and Age After iPhone.  And let it be told one more time, I never called the iPhone a 'jesusphone' - that was mistakenly attributed to me based on this blog posting.

If you believed like Winston Churchill, that the further back you look, the further forward you see, ie if there's a bit of a history buff in you (ah, a kindered spirit!) then check out why the previous decade should be called the Nokia Decade, and why NTT DoCoMo of Japan has been the true innovator for our industry for 30 years.

If you are more of a strategic thinker and would like to consider the long-term, then I have my famous 20 year forecast (5 years ago, so 15 years more to go), and my current 5 best predictions with Mobile Trends 2020 at this link.

If you would like to see me discuss these stories and see my slides and also perhaps want to see 'how' I perform in front of an audience (if you are considering booking me a speaker for example) then please view my keynote to the big Picnic event in Amsterdam last year: Tomi slides/presentation at Picnic

And finally, if you want to understand what is your economic opportunity in this industry, whether your company or brand or department or team or you personally, I have explained fully the economic opportunity of the moment in mobile in the digital Klondyke.

TOMI AHONEN ALMANAC 2010

Please finally allow me one plug. All the info in this blog are source: TomiAhonen Almanac 2010. My Almanac is an annual statistical review of the most relevant industry stats, with far more depth and detail than this blog can deliver. If this blog satisfied your needs, I am totally happy. If however, you have a need for more info about the industry, its size, or perhaps some breakdowns like what kinds of music services form the 13.9 Billion dollar size mobile music sector, or the installed base of smartphones over time, or the geographic breakdown of multiple subscriptions and unque mobile phone subscribers; or age breakdowns, or revenues per user, or the main data for specific countries of the 60 biggest countries on the planet,  etc, that sort of info is in the Almanac. 

The Almanac is not going to cripple your budget. The 180 page edition of the TomiAhonen Almanac 2010 still costs only 9.99 Euros. It is an unrestricted pdf file and formatted for smartphone readers, so you can carry all the industry data in your pocket. It has over 80 charts, tables and diagrams. I do think it is the best value for statistical information about our industry. The Almanac is not sold on Amazon, so the only place to see it and buy it is at this link: Tomi Ahonen Almanac 2010.

UPDATE Feb 10, 2010  - The TomiAhonen Almanac has now been released, it has 180 pages, 84 charts and tables (13 more than the 2009 edition) with sample stats, first opinions and ordering info at this story TomiAhonen Almanac 2010 Released.

This was a long blog once again, but thanks for reading to the end. Please feel free to leave comments, ask questions, we are always engaging here on the CDB blog and I will get to all comments as soon as I can.

Comments

[Lucas Warat]

hey tom, great stuff! I would really appreciate if you send me those stats!
I am trying to understand this trend and I totally agree with you in every single point except one.
why do you thing apps are silly and not worthy??
dont you think that they are like the SMS services that you describe but only with more capabilities?? for ex (in the case of the airline, an app not only will tell you if your flight is late, but whats your seat, hows the weather, the meal on bord, etc)
Thanks for your time
from Argentina
Lucas Warat

[Tomi Ahonen]

Hi Lucas

Thanks for the comments. Obviously please send me the email so I can respond to that with the attachment and you'll get the Cheat Sheet by return email.

About apps - sorry about that. I meant to include the link, that was why I didn't really explain it in the blog. After reading your comment, I rememberd the missing link and posted it now (as well as the one about the futility of location-based services)

But let me give you the quick version here. First, the apps story today is overblown to unbelievable degree. The money in it is pitiful and very few companies even on Apple's App Store are able to make profits out of the idea. Sounds great, looks great on an iPhone, 3 billion downloads is great - but the business is pitiful. (Read the long blog explanations if you want the details). So today, the hype and hysteria about apps stores is totally out of proportion. That is my big gripe, it is drowning out honest real opportunities in 'less sexy' but very lucrative SMS, MMS and WAP - each of which reaches at least 20x larger audiences in the USA than Apple's Apps Store, and outside of the USA, reach at least 50x bigger audiences..

With that, apps are good and apps stores are good. Very good developments for the industry, with promise. They are so tiny, they will not budge the rounding off error in the industry, but they are promising nonetheless. Over time, in about 3-5 years, they can be of equivalent magnitude to say mobile music today (mostly ringing tones). Nothing nearly like MMS or SMS obviously but in the class of ringing tones yeah, why not, if they continue great growth (which I doubt, once the hysteria subsides and sanity returns and managers start to look at real budgets and real returns...)

Apps can be far better in some cases, and hideously wrong in other cases. But in most normal 'digital' service/proposition instances, the solution could be delivered by app, or by browser service. And here I do believe the cloud and browser-based services will totally trunmp apps in the long run. But even then, Apps will grow to be a multi-multi-billion dollar market - in many years from now, not today.

By the way, that airline example - the world's first airline mobile check in was Finnair of course back in 2001 (Norwegian was the first total mobile solution) - and they did it initially all by SMS including your seat selection, meal choice etc. So you don't need an app for those either, can be done even on SMS (today Finnair does it on SMS, WAP, 'real web' xTML, and 2D Barcode).

Thanks for writing, you may want to go check out those 2 links to the apps story to really understand what I mean..

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[cycnus]

Hi Tomi,

Great stuff, as usual... you really awesome.

I was wondering if the number of one time user (a user that buy a prepaid card while traveling to some country to avoid roaming charges) really small in mobile industry that you miss to mention, or it's not very usual. I'm asking this because I have lots of foreign card such as Singapore (both Singtel and M1), HK (CSL), China (Unicom, china mobile), Thailand (I forgot the operator name). For each of the operator I mention here, I might own more than 1 card because sometimes it expired before I'm returning to that country.

[Tomi Ahonen]

Hi cygnus

Yes, good point. I have done occasional 'spot checks' on the sanity level of that stat, to see how many might be frequent travellers but while the number is in the dozens or perhaps hundred even million, it is too small to register in the overall subscriber stats. Take air travel. They transport a total of about a billion air journeys per year. So with round trips thats about 500 individual paid travellers going and coming back. Now lets assume in round terms that half is business travel and half is leisure (I don't have exact breakdowns, am not a travel expert but this will help give the scale) we get 250 million business trips per year. Then lets say the average business traveller makes 3 trips per year, we are at 83 million unique business traveller persons. Of those, what, if a third would get a second SIM card subscription at their destination, we're at about 28 million. Even if they had 2 foreign SIM cards on average, thats 50 million total 'frequent traveller' second subscriptions per year. Yes, its a giant number compared to say Kindle ebook readers or Playstation Portables but totally lost in the rounding off error of mobile phone subscriptions.

Also the mobile operators generally in most markets, will stop counting unused SIM cards after about half a year of non-use. But they usually won't kill off their balances until long after that, so there is some 'fluff' in the numbers, where a given infrequent traveller may have an active SIM card in another country that the person will still use later in the year, but local operator has already stopped counting it as an active subscription.

Thank you for writing

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[Wolfram Kriesing]

Thanks for all this useful information.
I just have one question.
What is "xTML"? Do you mean HTML, HTML5 and XHTML? Or others too?

Regards

Wolfram

[Tomi Ahonen]

Hi Wolfram

yes, you undestood exactly

Tomi :-)

[Madelin Manley]

Hey Tomi,

Really interesting post!

I'm currently doing a project in college on the mobile telephone industry and my head is wrecked from trying to find current (free) data on the facts and figures of the industry, like what you have reported, but what I can use for harvard referencing.

Would you mind supplying me with the data sheets or advising me as to where I can get this information on line.

Cheers

Madelin

[owrange]

this is a very wonderful reference. i would also love to receive the fact sheet. we have develop a little sms app.

thanks

[pulmonary disease]

Now lets assume in round terms that half is business travel and half is leisure

[James Pearce]

I still think you're a little confused with your markup acronyms (and I'm on a mission :-) )

"Classic WAP" would mean sites written in WML, a long-forgotten markup language of, shall we say, 'telco' heritage. There are still some sites out there - particularly in China for various top-down reasons - but rarely seen otherwise, and certainly not for new sites.

Nearly all mid-range and low-end mobile sites (including Flirtomatic's it seems) now use XHTML-MP, the mobile subset of the W3C's XHTML specification, more or less a successor to HTML4.

Although the OMA (once known as the WAP Forum) took it and badged it as part of their "WAP 2" suite of specs, XHTML-MP really has a web heritage, and is familiar enough to HTML developers to hardly warrant your confusing and nostalgic WAP badge.

Pretty much all mobile browsers (particularly with assistance from a gateway when required) will have no problem with this, and so it's the reason that it forms the basis of the W3C's own 'Mobile Web Best Practices' and the .mobi compliance rules.

Now... in the last 2-3 years, browsers have certainly started to claim (and even occasionally deliver!) support for 'full desktop sites', and operators have scrambled to promote the transcoding abilities of their network to vainly assist in this regard.

But at this point the argument sort of diverges from the technical specs of the markup languages themselves: it's more about browsers "taking whatever's thrown at them" and more importantly providing a UI that means the sites can at least be visited and navigated. This is done well by an iPhone, for example, but poorly by most operator-hosted gateways.

But in a way this all misses the real point... the markup specs and browser capabilities are all a means to an end, and whether a user can or cannot see a full web site designed for a desktop PC is not that relevant. Do they want to?

The real 'mobile web revolution' is about designing sites and services that are appropriate to the context of the mobile human (timely, location-based, efficient etc) rather than a sedentary one (blessed with time, a screen and a comfortable seat).

And *that's* why we're seeing an explosion in made-for-mobile web sites - even for iOS and Android handsets - not because browsers give much of a damn about this markup tag or that markup tag any more, but because people appear to want a subtly different web when they are on the move.

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[andion]

the only weakness may be an exaggeration to say that is not helping the dirty cans.