Lets do the mobile numbers for 2015. I've been doing this blog annually, for ages, and usually in the Spring. This year had so many things going on, that I never got to finish the analysis and writing - I match this of course with my annual statistical volume the TomiAhonen Almanac (which also today is thus released for 2015 - see below). This is, as always, the pubished official numbers by my consultancy and the largest collection of mobile stats for free for the industry, and all numbers are as of the start of the year 2015 (ie end of 2014 numbers). I know, I know, its been a while but lets do these now. I will try my best to get the 2016 edition out once again in the Spring as most years. But lets do some big huuuuuge numbers.
MOBILE IS BIGGEST FASTEST BADDEST MOST AWESOME
Yeah. First industry ever to have more paying customers than human beings are alive. We were at 7.2 Billion mobile phone subscriptions active as of the start of the year 2015. That is yes, exactly the same number as human beings (and mobile keeps growing). Its hard to put it in context, as there never was any tech that was used as widely. More active mobile phones than cars or motorcycles or bicycles. More mobile phones than TV sets, radios, personal computers, gaming consoles, digital cameras, music players etc. More mobile phones than .. wristwatches! And many who once wore a wristwatch have abandoned that and now tell time on their mobile phones. More mobile accounts than people who have access to running water or electricity. How is that possible - some people get their phones recharged in other locations like the village next door or sending the phone with the kids to school where the teacher will let the phones be charged. There is even the story of a village in India near the Pakistani border, where locals send phones by bus to the other side to be charged. How cool is that. And what about the pen and paper. The bare basic tech of the pencil. Yes, we exceed that too. The planet has 800 million people who are of the age to have gone to school, but never did and are illiterate (vastly more women than men) and thus have no use for even a basic pen or paper. But.. they can use mobile phones! We are utterly in uncharted territory with this industry. Isn't it cool?
SUBS, UNIQUES AND HANDSET
But 7.2 Billion mobile phone subcriptions does not mean in reality that every human alive has a mobile phone. Babies have no need for one, some great grandparents have already forgotten how to use a phone and/or can't hear or speak or use one. So how is it that we have 100% penetration rate on the planet. Obviously many of us carry two phones (or sometimes a second or third subcription for our tablet or the 4G/3G data dongle for our laptop). So how many are then unique subscribers? We have that number also. I was the person to first identify this bizarre phenomenon when it first happened in Finland and have spoken and written about it since. How many uniques? 4.5 Billion. That means an honest 'real' penetration rate of 63% of the planet's population who do actually have a phone and an active subscrption or account. And then it means that 2.6 Billion more accounts (usually SIM cards) are in the wild, for us to have two or three or more accounts for whatever reasons we want.
And do we care about the number of mobile PHONES that are in use? Of course we do! So some of us have two phones. How many total phones are in use and connected to an active account? 5.5 Billion! Thats handsets of either smartphones or dumbphones but in total yes, the planet has 5.5 Billion mobile phones and in 2014 a massive 1.9 Billion new mobile phones were sold (this year we expect to hit 2B). You might ask how many of those 5.5 Billion were smarthpones. And I mgiht be a nice boy and tell you. Yes. 36% of them are smartphones or 2.0 Billion. That means (at the start of this year) there were still 3.5 Billion dumbphones in use but most of those were yes, 'featurephones' that had a camera, a browser, often a touch screen and would be typically on a 2.5G modest speed mobile data connection.
1.6 TRILLION DOLLARS
And the fastest-growing giant industry in human economic history has not stopped growing. We hit 1.6 Trillion dollars in total revenues. That is ... gargantuan. It is mindboggling. Its so huuuge it would be 145 Donald Trumps... :-) .. How can we compare it? The planet as a whole spends more on mobile than it does buying cars annually. How's that for enormous? Or take the radio industry. No, forget about that, take the PC industry. No, actually,, lets take the landline telephone business. No, forget about that, take television. No, take the internet. Wait. WAIT A MOMENT... Mobile the industry is bigger than radio, TV, the PC industry, the internet and the landline phone business - COMBINED. And we're younger than any one of those except the internet (which is actually the second smallest of that set). Yes. Mobile, in only 35 years from commercial launch, has become the largest media industry - by far - and the largest tech industry - by FAR. And we're growing WAY faster than they are.
HOW ABOUT AN AUDIENCE?
So you think about audiences, do you? Newspapers globally print about 425 million issues daily. Mobile is.. Now if you stick an advertisement into one of those papery things, yeah, you might get an audience. We.. mobile.. are 12 times larger. 5 BILLION people saw an ad on their mobile phone in 2014. Yeah. 2.5 times more than the total number of TV sets in use on the planet. Mobile is 1.5 times larger than the total internet as an advertising medium (and much of that internet is also . mobile). Advertising on mobile has more than three times the reach of Facebook (and most of FB users come from... mobile). Google gets a quarter of its search revenues already from... mobile. You think radio is global and massive. Yeah, me too. Except that we've passed even radio already - as an ad platform. Mobile reaches 20% larger ad audience than the total number of radios in use, in your cars, on your kitchen clock-radios, in your home HiFi sets etc. Yes. 20% bigger than radio by ad reach. Oh, how much? Yeah, 44 Billion dollars in mobile ad revenues generated in 2014. Mobile advertising grew .. get this .. 43% .. IN ONE YEAR. Most industries would be happy to see one tenth that rate, to grow 4% in one year. By the way, those 'banner ads' and 'in-app advertising' - they are utter rubbish and bogus. The real power is of course in interactive, engagement which starts with... Mobile Messaging, not lousy banner ads that we all hate! Get your customer's permission, don't spy, don't spam. Get permission and then deliver excellence and get HUGE response rates. Like what? Mobile messaging on SMS and MMS gets ... 30% response rates with the big brands like Coca Cola, Adidas, Estee Lauder, McDonalds, Mastercard, etc etc etc.
SO WHATSUP WITH WHATSUP?
Yeah yeah, another silly story. Whatsapp (and other OTT instant messaging services) is excellent for any of us to do our PERSON-TO-PERSON messaging, especially all who are really addicted to mobile, like say.. the youth. Great. Sending 100 messages per day is 'so last year' now they're doing 200 per day. But if you - my readers - want to reach a customer, then forget about puny little Whatsapp until it reaches most users. You know what reaches every pocket. Truly, every single mobile phone on the planet? Only SMS text messaging. How big is SMS? It has....... it has..... it has... wait. Let me give you context first. Whatsapp has just shy of 1 Billion users. That is yes, big. Not huge. But big. Twitter has only 300 million users and we all are nuts about that. Instagram has 400 million users. So yeah, Whatsapp is big. Facebook is bigger, it has 1.6 Billion users. Now what was I talking about? Oh, the biggest messaging platform on the planet. Would you be impressed if I said I have a mobile messaging platform that has TWICE as many users as FACEBOOK? Three times Whatsapp? Active - and PAYING users? Thats not SMS by the way. Thats... MMS !!!!
Don't wrinkle your nose at me! Its just after Christmas! MMS is not a 'picture messaging service' else they would have named it PMS. MMS is a MULTIMEDIA messaging service. Its the PERFECT vehicle to send your videos - yes VIDEO clips - and music - jingles to your ads - and of course pictures - and LONGER messages than possible on SMS. MMS is literally everything you hoped SMS was. Now, most MMS active users do not send MANY MMS messages monthly, and the majority of MMS revenues is not person-to-person pictures and videoclips, its ... multimedia. Its coupons, offers, airline tickets, TV show previews, all that sort of stuff. But yeah, has 3.2 Billion active users and reaches 5.2 mobile phones.
But there is something even more awesome than MMS..Yes, at more than 5 times the number of users as Whatsapp. Yes, three and a half times more active - paying - users than Facebook. There is only one such data service on the planet, it is of course.. SMS text messaging (invented by my mentor, Matti Makkonen who just died this year). SMS text messaging can sell your goods, can handle your payments, can deliver your confirmations about your deliveries, and can even win your an election like President Obama proved in 2012 with the most powerful single message ever sent by any one person anywhere.
Oh wait, oh wait! I forgot about the MONEY !! There are all those silly 'experts' who rant and rave about location-based services and about smartphone apps. Apps schmapps. Smartphone apps generated 29 Billion dollars of revenues last year. How did MMS do? Try 39 Billion dollars !!! And most of that is.. MEDIA content !!! Then how did SMS do? Text messaging was worth... drumroll ... 139 Billion dollars last year... Yeah... You know how big that is? Take all the money earned by the music industry? Add on top of that all the money earned by cinema? Then add on top of that all the videogaming revenues? When those are added together, they aren't near the size of SMS text messaging revenues all by itself. And SMS is only 21 years old as a commercial service, far younger than those other industries. So yeah. Whatsapp will come some day. If Whatsapp continues to grow its users at the rate it has been growing (thats unlikely) then it would catch up to SMS in about year 2030.. Wake me when we're at 2025 and I'll start to pay attention to Whatsapp...
If you used Whatsapp to communciate to your audience (in any country except its home, the Netherlands) then you'd abandon from a quarter to as much as three out of every four customers, in the Western world. And as much as 90% or more, in the Emerging World. Yeah. Whatsapp is exciting and yes, its causing headaches to the telcos ruining their little profit party around SMS. But if you are a brand or advertiser or media or government or educator or company or non-profit or political party or whatever, you have to START with SMS. It is actually what 'mobile first' means. To start with SMS. THEN you can add the other nonsense like Instagram and Whatsapp and Twitter and Facebook if you want. You can even toss in the old email and fax... But nothing on the planet reaches every pocket of every economically viable human being, except SMS. And then when you have mastered SMS and are ready to go supersized, you study MMS and really make your customers/audiences/patients/students/voters/members/etc happy...
INTERNET IS MOBILE
So we have talked about the migration and evolution of the legacy 'sixth mass media' PC based internet to the newer, better, faster and smaller-screen mobile internet. I was there to argue this point from the start when most 'experts' suggested the internet would take over this silly mobile thingy. No it didn't. Today all major internet experts, starting with Google and Facebook - teach us that you have to 'mobile optimize' your websites. If that is so, then it means that a traditional legacy internet page, designed for the PC, is obsolete for mobile! And who told you so? Thirteen YEARS ago, in my book m-Profits! A whole five years before Google became convinced and joined our choir. So do we have numbers? The world had 3 Billion internet users at the end of 2014. How many were on mobile? Try 90%. Yes, 2.7 Billion people used mobile at least part of the time - only 10% never used mobile and only used a PC (including laptops and tablets - a tablet is not a mobile, it is an 'ultraportable' - get with the program, I won't waste this blog to again explain that point). Now. The largest number of users actually use BOTH. Both a PC and a mobile. Thats 46% of all internet users. But 44% of internet users do not even OWN a PC or laptop or tablet. Yes, 44% never use a PC, only use a mobile phone - either smartphone or 'featurephone' to access the internet, while 10% of internet users (who do own a mobile phone) only access via a PC. And the big slice in the middle, 46% of us, use both a mobile and a PC, depending on the situation and need, to go online. So whose winning, eh? Mobile, mobile, mobile!
What else do you want? I have all the numbers! How many people consume news on a mobile phone today? 2.7 Billion people. How many phones in use have Bluetooth? 85%. What is the biggest smartphone operating system by installed base in Latin America? Android. What about the OS that sells the best in Latin America? Also Android. How much is the average monthly revenue of premium mobile data users today? Its $3.81 per month (so only premium mobile data, excluding messaging, averaged across all mobile subscribers globally). How big is the mobile education services market? Its worth 19 Billon dollars. How many people download games and play them on their phones? 1.7 Billion. Which region earns the most out of mobile social networking services? Its the Emerging World side of Asia now for the first time passed Japan and South Korea and the 'tiger' economies of Asia. What was the proportion of enterprise/business apps out of all smartphone apps? 28%. You want 3G networks, you want camera resolutions, you want subscriber counts, I got more numbers for you than you can shake a stick at.
Ok, I will post this now, I may come and add some tidbits to this blog later, but you may want to bookmark this blog as the latest, comprehensive numbers, many that you can't find anywhere else. I will do a few other numbers-related blogs this week that are related. But now we need to celebrate the brand new Almanac.
TOMIAHONEN ALMANAC 2015 RELEASED
The best little stats-pack you can imagine, with 210 pages of numbers numbers numbers, including over 90 tables and charts, all totally up to date, and the whole package is a pdf file you can save onto your phone and carry all the stats in your pocket. And its not copyprotected, you can store another copy onto your laptops and another onto your tablet and your backup smartphone too. The best value of stats for mobile only costs 9.99 Euros. Unbeatable value. Except now, to celebrate those who came to work in the days between Christmas and New Year's (or early in the New Year) I will make a special discounted price of half price for the next two weeks. Use this code here to link to the ordering page. I am going to remove that link after the first week of January and then the price goes to its normal 9.99 Euros. But if you'd like to see the outline and style of the Almanac, I have the older ad on my website, for a previous edition. (I will update that in the coming days) This 2015 edition is in exactly the same format, only all the data is new. And don't go to that ordering page, the only place you can get the half-price offer, is from here. This link is the half-price offer.
BUT for those who want to see the Table of Contents, I will include that here:
Contents: TomiAhonen Almanac 2015
Chapter 1 - Intro to this Almanac . . . . . . . . . Page 1
Chapter 2 - Size of Industry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Chapter 3 - Customers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Chapter 4 - Handsets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Chapter 5 - Mobile Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Chapter 6 - Mobile Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Chapter 7 - Seventh Mass Media Channel . . . . . . 96
Chapter 8 - Music on Mobile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Chapter 9 - Mobile TV and Video . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
Chapter 10 - Mobile Gaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Chapter 11 - Mobile Social Networking . . . . . . . . 131
Chapter 12 - Other Mobile Content . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Chapter 13 - Smartphone Apps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Chapter 14 - Mobile Advertising and Marketing . 153
Chapter 15 - Voice Calls . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Chapter 16 - Business/Enterprise Services . . . . 170
Chapter 17 - Other Mobile Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
Chapter 18 - Network Infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . 176
Chapter 19 - Digital Divide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
Chapter 20 - History and Milestones . . . . . . . . . . 190
Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Index of Mobile Leadership for 30 advanced countries
60 Major Countries
25 Countries by Most Mobile Subscribers
25 Countries with Highest Mobile Penetration Rate
25 Countries with Highest 3G Penetration Rate
20 Biggest Mobile Operator Groups
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
Other books by Tomi T Ahonen
To order the TomiAhonen Almanac 2015 at half-price offer, click here.
i did ordered immediately. ) will recommend to order corporate version also.
Posted by: Kirill Zelenski | December 29, 2015 at 08:22 AM
Tomi,
"If you used Whatsapp to communciate to your audience (in any country except its home, the Netherlands"
Whatsapp was founded in California. I do not understand the "home in the Netherlands" part?
Posted by: Winter | December 29, 2015 at 01:05 PM
Hi Tomi and all, Wishing you all happy festive season and a prosperous new year 2016.
I read with great interest Tomi's article and was wondering where is the analysis on the future of Voice/Messaging ? To talk of MMS at this day and age is very yesterday or perhaps last week - its very sour milk (no offence intended). Messaging and recently Voice has moved to newer more effective platforms. I used to have problems configuring my handset to send a simple picture message, high messaging bills after many error messages. Today, you do not need to worry about that with the new messaging platforms. Infact, you do not need to know what configurations are needed only register and you are ready to go.
Whatsapp and Facebook have taken over messaging and even rich voice (HD Voice, quick call setup) with little marketing effort overtaking MS Skype. Recently the young generation prefer newer platforms like instagram and snapchat while operators failed to embrace newer technology. I remember speding many workshops explaining to operators the benefit of RCS and hearing the constant, "it will only work if all users subscribed". It is at very slow pace that operators embraced 4G apart from a few like American Operators, EE UK and couple other. VoWiFi has only recently been adopted by a few operators to run on their 4G networks. Probably for the fear of losing the high premium Voice and Data rates but that is exactly what has driven many users to these new platforms with high quality yet cheap means of communication. It is a no brainer that at this age, Skype is not the only kid on the block when it comes to rich communication with relatives especially those living abroad. Several operators have already talked of switching off their 3G networks as 4G picks up pace.
Should operators not embrace the "Bit Pipe" approach to keep a piece of the pie ? What does the future hold for traditional mobile operators, especially those that will not embrace 4/5 G ? My view they will find themselves in a very empty house wondering where on earth has circus moved to.
Back to the reading and Happy New Year 2016 !
Posted by: Jamie | December 29, 2015 at 02:06 PM
Hi Kirill, Winter and Jamie
Kirill - thanks! Its already been delivered
Winter - Sorry, maybe I've been mistaken. I remember hearing from Whatsapp people that it was a Dutch company or maybe it was Dutch owners/founders/creators or maybe it launched in the Netherlands first. I also noticed in the years that the adoption has been fastest/highest in the Netherlands. But I may be mistaken, I will look into it.
Jamie - haha, first. On 'MMS dead' Haha. Yeah. There is a CHAPTER on messaging in the Almanac and on this blog I wrote a 20,000 word essay once again on mobile messaging earlier this year, where I discussed that myth (once again). The numbers are brutal. The ACTIVE user base of MMS is three times that of Whatsapp. The POTENTIAL REACH of Whatsapp is limited to a fraction of the installed base of all phones, while MMS reaches most phones (the ones it can't reach are primarily in poor parts of Africa and Asia).
MMS as a media and content PLATFORM is the second best on the planet behind only SMS, in reach, in active users, and in REVENUES. But it is not used OFTEN. The active users might only send one or two MMS messages per month. For the advertiser, TV station, airline, retail store, whatever, the REACH is the key. Whatsapp doesn't reach (except in a few countries like Netherlands) a comparable number of people.
You and I may hate USING MMS as a person-to-person 'picture sharing' service for which it is remarkably clumsy - yet people still do - 3.2 BILLION people do that. What it is PERFECT for, is delivering MEDIA. Most consumers who receive say an airline boarding pass with the airlines's branding and the QR code, think its just an SMS text message that has a pretty picture. They don't even KNOW its an MMS. This is media. This is what TV for example is doing to send preview clips, or hollywood movies are using to send trailers to new movies etc. So yeah, I hear you. That what you said, I hear almost weekly. And yet what you wrote is a MYTH. Whatsapp is growing at nearly record-setting speed. If it continues to grow at that speed, it will catch up with SMS texting by active users around year 2030. I don't deal with myths on this blog and nonsense, I deal with the cold facts and hard numbers. All the major experts in the industry agree that this is so, and the brands and media and advertisers are learning the hard lessons now, as they finally agree to try something other than apps, and are astonished how well SMS - and MMS - is working. Just today on Twitter heard about a mobile marketing campaign that got a 60% redemption rate on coupons that were delivered via MMS. Sorry, you're wrong on that.
When you write 'Whatsapp and Facebook have taken over messaging' that only applies to the HEAVY USER TRAFFIC. Even most who who are heavy users of Whatsapp or Facebook, send occasional SMS messages. You are only referring to the hyped stats about traffic numbers, not users, not revenues and not engagement levels. Those are mostly teenagers who send 200 messages per day to each other. When they need to verify their lost password, they will happily do that with SMS etc..
Now on voice calls. The Almanac has a chapter on voice (see the Table of Contents, Chapter 15 in the above). I was the first expert of the mobile industry to observe the bewildering statistic that some people who used mobile phones, had stopped making voice calls (again, this happened first in Finland). So yeah, its been part of all I work with and write about, but its of only modest interest to most who work in this field. Telcos yes, haha, but not most who come to read this blog.
But to answer your question. There is a view that operators/carriers/telcos hate to hear, that their future might become a bit-pipe. I was doing these discussions nearly two decades ago and taught my consultants when I ran Nokia's consulting, to avoid this topic because carriers/operators/telcos didn't want to consider that option. So far, 15 years into the life of the 'rich' mobile data environments past just SMS, the operators/carriers are still able to milk those old cash cows, voice and SMS. They all see their revenues and profits in decline. I discuss this in the Almanac of course.
The bad part about the bit pipe scenario is that it would be a low-profit marging, high traffic business, in this, very capital-intensive industry. Investors (shareholders) don't want to see margins eroded to such degree. Its unlikely to be embraced soon, but some carriers/operators may go that way in the mid-term future. That to me, however, as a mobile industry consultant and 'expert' is not the optimal way to go. Most tech futurist agree that 'Big Data' would or should offer a lucrative profit opportunity for whoever does it. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Samsung etc are all playing into that direction. I say Big Data without Mobile is like a car without gasoline. So the mobile operators/carriers should look into this area, in particular as they own and operate the most enormous data gathering and collection systems in existence (their billing engines, the largest databases on the planet, utterly dwarfing other large databases like banks, credit cards and the tax authorities of countries). And most operators/telcos have seen this coming and are moving, but cautiously, in that direction.
On relying just on voice or SMS profits, no, that era is coming to an end. Many operators have already been stung by the rapid collapse of voice call profits (especially international call profits) by Skype and rivals, and of SMS consumer person-to-person profits by Whatsapp and rivals. The quarterly results of telcos now regularly feature surprises of losses but usually reliably profitable carriers/operators. Its the HEAVY volume users, when they suddenly switch, the damage will impact the telco profits very rapidly. As the 'cool kids' go to some popular new messaging or social media service, all their friends will follow, so there is a near-immediate collapse of the heavy user SMS texting traffic. With voice its not that dramatic because most profit is on international calls and only a tiny slice of all phone users generate most of those calls, and that transition to say Skype will not be instantaneous.
Is this painful. Obviously. Was this a surprise, absolutely not. The cannibalization of SMS by 'IM services' and of voice by 'VOIP' services was predicted in UMTS Report number 9, 15 years ago, to have happened - IN THE LAST DECADE. The operators/carriers have had a far longer 'good period' than they expected to get. But that time is coming to an end.
Hope that helped
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | December 29, 2015 at 03:26 PM
Hi Wayne
Actually its (also) not true but often the term MMS is not used. I often even see the US industry say they put a picture into SMS or a QR code into SMS. Its the same thing, they just don't know its actually MMS. But there are tons of major campaigns, major brands, ABC TV show's what is that youth teenager thing, Pretty Little Liars, it sends MMS clips and 'secrets' to its fans, via MMS. Whats the one big department store... Nordstrom I think, it uses personal shoppers to loyalty program customers which send recommendation on clothing, accessories etc to to the customers, and they actually say, the recommendations come via SMS but they have... pictures. They use MMS, they just don't say they do. Incidentially more than half of Nordstrom's total m-commerce is sold with those MMS messages - that of course have 'click to buy' response options, like any messaging would have. Part of the charm and power. American Airlines for example uses MMS when it sends you mobile boarding passes and so forth and so forth. Tons an tons of it.
But its not REPORTED by most who discuss the industry, because the banner ad sales networks don't control the SMS and MMS inventory... haha !!! thats where the rub is. So the impression is that there is nothing going on. But look at the studies, most will say 'excludes advertising on messaging' or 'excludes SMS and MMS'.
I just Tweeted today a link to yet another American mobile marketing exec, who once again said the same thing, that they keep telling their clients, don't do the apps first, mobile first means messaging first. And that he always gets angry reactions from clients who are mesmerized by their cool ideas for smartphone apps... All the big names there like the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) and the gurus and authors of mobile marketing there across the Atlantic, like Gary Schwartz and Michael Becker and Kim Dushinski and Chetan Sharma etc, they all say - do SMS and MMS - and that MMS will supercharge your already awesome SMS marketing performance. MMS delivers from 3x to 6x better response rates and redemption rates than the same campaign run on SMS. While SMS gets 10x to 50x better rates than mobile banner ads.
Now who makes the money? Carriers take a huge slice - even more so the greedy American ones haha. As to the Almanac, no, it won't give that kind of breakdown, as this is not a mobile messaging report haha. There is only one chapter on messaging which includes everything from SMS to OTT messaging like Whatsapp.
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | December 29, 2015 at 06:34 PM
@Wayne
It's because you are Americans - clueless on mobile and laggards in technology.
Posted by: N9 | December 29, 2015 at 09:42 PM
Hi Wayne and N9
Wayne, sorry if there was confusion. MMS is not the largest mobile ad platform, either by volume nor by revenues. Neither is SMS while its larger than MMS in mobile ad volume and by revenues. So SMS is the largest mobile DATA service by users and by revenues but not specifically in advertising. MMS is the second largest mobile data service by users and revenues, but most of its reveunues are still paid media not advertising.
Banner ads are BY FAR the largest mobile ad media by volume, and somewhat larger than messaging, by revenues, globally. In North America where the internet was born and banner ads most abusively pervasive, and where SMS and MMS were late deployed and not well understood, the imbalance is worst (compared to the rest of the world) where banners are by far the most used mobile ad format and proportionately SMS and MMS are least used (compared to rest of world, as proportion of mobile ad budgets totally).
N9 - thanks but lets play nice :-) And 'laggards in tech' is a bit stretching it, they are laggards in mobile tech but I'd say well on par or ahead on many other tech, compared to almost any other country except South Korea. Now, when I say ahead, obviously this does not apply to their archaic banking systems - even using paper cheques still regularly... gosh how ancient is that.
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | December 30, 2015 at 06:28 AM
Tomi: My recent experience with American marketing involves SMS. I think I'll share it to you:
My daughter has a Lumia. Don't blame me, this is Finland and she bought it herself. I advised her NOT to set up a M$ account so this is one in your reported pack of "one third of Lumias that have never been activated". ;-)
Now after Christmas my daughter got a SMS from local shopping centre saying that "You have not visited our mall in a week! Would you like to hear about the recent offers?"
I happened to hear her mention the SMS and asked to see it. According to the text the advertiser got the phone number from Microsoft.
Here comes the ugly part: The location data was correct, it was exactly one week since her last visit there. That means that not only is her phone sending her location info to Microsoft, accompanied with the phone number, but all this is done from a device where she has never set up a M$ account and therefore she has never agreed to any cryptic license agreement that would allow them to do this.
What a jolly business they have in the Americas.
Posted by: Asko | December 30, 2015 at 04:08 PM
Hi Asko
Gosh, creepy isn't it, as the father.. Thanks for sharing. This is sad, weird, bewildering and also upsetting. I always say, don't spy, don't spam. Ask permission and deliver satisfaction. Create magical experiences to delight... that is all the wrong way, in every way...
Thanks for writing.
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | December 30, 2015 at 06:45 PM
Asko,
Windows 10 is another stalker. If you turn off the system that sends information to Microsoft, the next major software update turns it back on. This has been heavily reported in the Tech media.
No, I have no direct experience with this myself, I don't use Windows, haven't since Windows XP cost me a week's worth of work. Even I learn eventually.
Posted by: Wayne Borean | December 31, 2015 at 06:11 AM