Grab Bag of Misc Mobile Stats for the Day

So a bunch of fresh mobile stats have been released from various sources. No rhyme or reason to these, just a random grab-bag of miscellaneous mobile stats that some of our readers will appreciate.

Abi counted the size of the mobile phone accessories market for 2015 to be worth 81.5 Billion US dollars. Yes. Billions not millions. So just the accessories side of the handset side of mobile is now bigger than say the global cinema industry (Hollywood, Bollywood, Nollywood and all other woods, combined). The largest category in accessories are smartphone covers, but it includes other things like chargers, batteries, headphones etc.

Now what about those infamous location-based services? Well, if we include non-mobile but GPS based mapping solutions like TomTom the total value of the location-based navigation and mapping industry is 2.35 Billion dollars in 2016 says Sandler Research. Yes, tiny compared to any other similar mobile services cagetory that is equally 15 years or so of age, as I've been warning for .. 15 years ... that location-based services is not the digital nirvana. It is literally the worst-performing sector out of this giant vastly profitable and rapidly expanding global industry. In other words WHICHEVER other area you invest in, within mobile - it will give you better returns than location-based services. Duh. Literally told you so. Not last year but literally, 15 years ago  So 2.35 Billion is all there is (which includes non-mobile GPS service revenues like TomTom). That is in my book tantamount to less than nothing.

So lets compare to another mobile services sector which is also 15 years of age - mobile gaming (as in games not pre-installed on phones which is now almost two decades old). Digi-Capital says 2015 total worldwide videogaming industry was 88 Billion dollars in size - that is all gaming on consoles, internet and mobile. How big is mobile out of that? Its now the largest slice worth.. 29 Billion dollars (compare to location-based services in the above. You see what I mean?). Oh, also IDC has now verified that mobile gaming is the largest sector in total videogaming. Duh, told you so...

Among those games, one of the giants is Finnish game developer Supercell. You probably know it from its titles, Clash of Clans or Boom Beach. How big is Supercell? They made 2.3 Billion dollars of revenues last year.. Yes, Supercell alone makes as much money out of mobile gaming than all Location-Based service providers combined worldwide. Yeah. I think I know a bit about where the money is in this industry and a goldmine, Location-based Services is not. Congrats to Supercell for its repeated successes.

Then lets switch gears. What about another 15 year old mobile industry sector? Mobile payments. What? You thought mobile payments started with Apple two years ago. Noooooo. No no no no noooooooo, no. Not even close. GSMA reports that 411 million people worldwide use mobile payments services and most of those are of course based on SMS text messaging. How much use? GSMA says December 2015 is when the world passed the level of one Billion mobile payment transactions per month. Like I keep writing, its mo Money!

Talking about mobile messaging. eMarketer has released their survey of global OTT messaging user numbers and find a total of 1.4 Billion mobile phone owners worldwide are active users of any of the OTT messaging platforms like Whatsapp. That seems like a large number yes, until you notice that SMS text messaging has 5.8 Billion active users and MMS has 3.5 Billion. Even the internet with 3.2 Billion active users means most of those internet users will be on mobile - and most of the internet users will have email, being far larger than OTT by users. But yes, OTT messaging keeps growing, fine. Its no rival to SMS or MMS for many years to come - when it comes to anyone out there of my readers - various businesses and media and organizations and governments - wanting to talk to their audiences, customers, citizens etc.. Mobile First always starts with SMS. After you have done SMS (and MMS) then yes, you can add OTT, why not. But to start a mobile strategy on OTT is as idiotic as starting a mobile strategy with an iPhone app haha. (For those who don't understand this point instinctively, just read this). Oh, and eMarketer gives also the regional breakdown of OTT use. Out of total population, in North America 35% use some OTT messaging service. In Europe its 31%, in Latin America 23%, in Asia 20% while in Middle East and Africa its 7%. In all those regions, obviously SMS reaches two to three times larger audience.

Then lets do a bit of mAd. Warc has calculated that the global advertising industry grows 4% this year to reach the value of 561 Billion dollars worldwide. That includes all TV, radio, print, internet, outdoor and yes mobile advertising. Nice size industry yeah (but mobile as an industry is already 3 times larger and growing much faster). Now how big is mobile advertising - ie mAd - out of that total industry? Mobile is the fastest-growing sector in advertising yes, it reaches a value of 40 Billion dollars this year says Warc. Nice big number (contrast with LBS haha, also advertising on mobile is about 15 years of age, actually 16 years to be precise).

This rapid growth of mobile advertising is related to the increasing relevance of mobile in our lives. Even the USA is catching up to global numbers. ComScore just reported that mobile now accounts even in the USA for 2 out of every 3 digital minutes of consumer time. (but our readers on this blog have known these trends for many years by now).

Lastly lets do an area of innovation. In the UK they are trialing technology to put passports on mobile phones. The Telegraph wrote about it. Yes, I told you so that too was coming. 

So there is a quick nice survey of many mobile industry numbers. Of course for those who need these kinds of stats but want them all, the only source is the TomiAhonen Almanac that comes out every year. The latest edition is 2015 and it has all these items covered and hundreds more. Note the page shows an older edition but of course we ship the latest 2015 TomiAhonen Almanac.

Comments

[Wayne Borean]

Fascinating. Those numbers should scare a lot of people.

[John A]

Interesting to read. About the smartphone wars it seems like Android is the clear winner. Even Microsoft admit it at the build conference:

"In other words, if you are a Windows guy, if you have bet on Windows 10, then you should adopt Android, and not iPhone, as your smart phone" choice."
https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/65886/solved-android-iphone-windows-guy

Will be interesting what Apple can do next?

[chithanh]

Intel and Microsoft seem to realize that they will remain irrelevant in mobile in the foreseeable future.

At their build conference, Microsoft said that Windows Phone is not their focus this year:
http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/30/11333378/microsoft-windows-phone-windows-mobile-plans
Now, Bloomberg reports that Intel's head of mobile is stepping down after less than a year in office:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-01/intel-mobile-chip-leader-aicha-evans-said-to-be-leaving-company

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Wayne

I have ALL THOSE CASES in my first book a decade and a half ago. It has a whole CHAPTER on location-based services. You touched on one of the problems - in the point about Twitter - that while we appreciate proximity - we DON'T WANT TO BE LIMITED to it. In many cases - not all - we still want global or national or far wider visibility than location. And even in really close-by stuff, we may prefer that Walmart which is near the office - not the one here, near the home, etc.

The big thing with location, as I wrote in my second book where I changed my mind - in 2002 yes 14 years ago when I went from totally loving LBS to becoming one of the first experts to warn its not the bucket of gold - is that THERE IS NO MONEY

You don't pay for the maps on your phone, they are built-in like the camera. You don't pay for the GPS location precision, that comes as part of the radio chip set and you connect to it without any extra payments just like you do to the cellular network (assuming your contract or prepaid account has a balance) or how you connect to any open WiFi network.

There are VERY few opportunities to make MONEY on location. That is literally less than 2.35 Billion dollars in an industry that is worth 1.5 TRILLION dollars. I never said there is 'no' money in location, but that it is THE WORST performing SECTOR in mobile. Anything else you do - if you do news headlines, or you do mobile music downloads, or you do a social network, or you do games, or you do mobile payments, or you do mobile advertising, or you do mobile healthcare, or you do mobile education - ANY OTHER sector is a better opportunity than location. I said so in 2002, it was true in 2005, it was true in 2009, it was true in 2012 and its true now. Latest numbers - again prove the same. There is no pot of gold in location. I have chronicled on this blog the industry and its big opportunities and that is the absolute truth.

So why are you puzzled? I've said this same story time and again for literally 14 years (and am DEFINITELY the first of the 'true believers in location' who had that change of heart - note, that there were certainly many who were smarter than me and NEVER believed in location-based services haha)

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[chithanh]

Off topic, but as Ronnie Corbett passed away recently, we can commemorate him by watching his famous and brilliant sketch "My Blackberry is not working!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAG39jKi0lI

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Wayne

That was the understanding in 2002 yes, that navigation will help with cars, whether its taxis or parcel delivery or tourist navigation with rental cars (oh, and a great-grandfather to Uber, the worlds' first mobile service to a municipal taxi service just serving the taxi drivers was launched in Finland back in the 1990s developed by my good friend Taina Kalliokoski..)

As to ads, there are many award-winning ad campaigns that used location, which almost as a rule are not able to be replicated across the whole ad industry; special one-offs like the 'chase the Mini' game out of Stockholm or the 'discount count-down clock' out of Guatemala etc. That while you can create a very highly rated and noticed (and even modestly used and modestly successful commercially) ad service with location - that is not sustainable either. Its EXACTLY the same thing as you pointed out with your Twitter comment - an advertising brand will not want to put artificial limits to mobility. Mobility means ESCAPING the physical boundaries of location. If location-based ads were the best thing since sliced bread, then the best ad platform would be cinema advertising which includes local ads (after the movie, why not come to Mario's Italian Restaurant around the corner..) Even there - movies - most ads are NOT LOCALIZED and are generic national ads. Putting a location limit to mobile is like putting speed bumps on the highway - a road built to let you drive fast, why on earth would you then want to put artificial barriers to it. Same with location. But this takes time, because for most engineers the thrill of location-positioning and precision is so exciting. It took the marketing and consumer behavior people to figure out, that no, location is not a billable service except in very rare cases (mostly vehicles) and even most services that could use it (like ads) work BETTER when the location barrier is remove.

Tomi Ahonen :-)

[chithanh]

Gartner has released numbers for the PC market, and they are not pretty. PC sales are at the lowest point since 2007.

http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3280626

Some noteworthy findings:
* Installed base of PCs is shrinking. People are not just holding off on upgrades, they are abandoning PCs.
* New households prioritize buying smartphones over buying PCs. That means, smartphones are at least in part to blame for the decline of PCs.

Of course neither should be a surprise to anybody who regularly reads Tomi's blog. :)