Why Combination of Social Networking & Mobile Platforms Will Be Big

  (image courtesy of InsideFacebook) eMarketer predicts that people accessing social networks on their mobile phones world-wide will grow ten-fold in the next five years, from 82 million in 2007 to over 800 million people in 2012. This major trend will have multiple implications. Usage of current popular social networks via mobile phones should grow rapidly. According to Brandon Lucas, head of mobile business development for MySpace, MySpace recorded 7 million unique registrations for MySpace Mobile within six months of launch. What's interesting is that these numbers are comparable to growth figures of mobile-only social networking players such as mig33, airG and Mocospace which also claim several millions users shortly after launch. If you thought abundance of available ad inventory on current social networks was an issue, the potential mobile ad inventory in the same segment will be much larger. The appeal of mobile social networking for carriers should be huge. Already large carriers like Vodafone are moving quickly to cut deals with leading social networks like Facebook and MySpace anticipating huge demand for mobile data access.

Results of a Forrester Research Study show that popular social networking activity of US Adult Mobile Internet Users (in Q2 of 2007) was uploading photos and videos at 44% and 38% respectively (60% of all phones in the US are estimated to be camera phones). Posting ratings of products/services at 42% was second only to uploading photos, followed by maintaining or updating a blog at 39%. It's surprising that we're not seeing many more leading websites launching mobile versions of their services with a design geared towards the mobile users. FriendFeed, despite being a relatively new service, understands the value of the mobile interface, as they launched a new iPhone interface recently.

As for monetization, at least 20% of US mobile users have seen SMS ads, while in Europe the number ranges from 31% in Germany to 73% in Spain, according to M:Metrics. Up to 10% of US mobile users and on average about 4% of European mobile users have purchased ringtones, while more than 9% of mobile users played downloaded games in Italy, Spain, UK and the US. Jupiter Research expects mobile entertainment revenues to grow from $20 billion in 2007 to over $64 billion in 2012 globally.

While there's a striking difference in usage patterns between iPhone users and other mobile phone users - for instance, 21% of iPhone users watched on demand video compared to 1.4% of total mobile phone users - the gap should narrow as RIM and HTC are expected to launch more compelling Blackberry and Windows Smartphone models respectively to compete with the iPhone.

In summary, the monetization and growth potential of mobile platforms shall remain extremely exciting on a global basis and this trend is unlikely to stay limited merely to the potential of iPhone.

Comments

[Erhan Erdogan]

(a summary of mobile statistics below, in Turkish)
Aşağıda favorim Hindistan’dan çeşitli rakamlar var:

Mobil abone sıralaması Çin, Hindistan ve ABD (Ülkelerin nüfusları tabii ki göz önünde bulundurulmalı)

Nisan ayı verilerine göre Hindistan yeni mobil abone ivmesinde birinci sırada

Nisan ayında 8.2 milyon yeni abone yapmışlar ve toplam 269 milyon aboneye sahipler

Hindistan’da sosyal ağlara ulaşımın %48′i mobil telefonlardan (Not: Hindistan’da bilgisayar kullanımı da düşük)

Twitter‘ın kullanıcı sayısı 1 milyon’dan fazla, Hindistan’daki web/mobil sosyal ağ SMS GupShup‘ın 7 milyon kullanıcısı var

Twitter’da günde 3 milyon mesaj atılıyor, SMS GupShup’ta 10 milyon

SMS GupShup’ta SMS göndermek bedava (80 karakter)

160by2 1 senelik, şu an da en popüler bedava SMS şirketi. Alexa’ya Hindistan’daki 78. site, Opera’ya göre 7. 1 yılda, 1 milyon kullanıcı yapmışlar.

Hindistan’da şöyle bir algılama var: “Dünyada Hotmail 97′de bedava e-mail’i başlattı; 2007 yılında da SMSCountry bedava SMS’i”

Hindistan’daki bedava SMS mantığı 80+80=160 kuralıyla sağlanıyor. 80 karakter reklam, 80 karakter kullanıcının mesajı

Son olarak da Türkiye’deki mobil penetrasyon %84, abone sayısı da 62 milyon; oranın kısa zamanda %100′e gelmesini, devamında da %130-%140 arasında olması bekleniyor

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