Rating: Women and mature users dominate m-commerce
A somewhat startling finding from the latest quarterly report on the mobile advertising industry from BuzzCity is that in the UK, ad impressions are still dominated by BlackBerry (with 69 per cent). The company admits that this is declining with growing interest in Apple devices. The report’s main conclusion is that m-commerce adoption will be driven by women and mature users. In terms of what types of transaction users are making with their mobile phones, BuzzCity has found that services to stay connected; lifestyle and leisure; plus travel are the main categories. BuzzCity served more than 126 billion ads in 2011 which compares to 52 billion in 2010.Although the majority of new mobile internet users globally are young males, female adoption of mobile web usage is growing globally.
For example, in the United Kingdom there are nearly as many women as men using the mobile web (49 per cent).
While 15 per cent of mobile internet users are now over 35, the influence of this group is disproportionately high when mobile purchases are made.
Over-35s made 19 per cent of travel-related purchases, 23 per cent of grocery purchases and 21 per cent of household utility payments globally in the past six months.
In terms of m-commerce, payments for phone credits (ie services to stay connected) are high in countries where the mobile is the primary point of access to the internet.
The purchase of entertainment and lifestyle items including gadgets is a popular use for m-commerce with Nigeria (31 per cent) being particularly high compared to 20 per cent in the UK.
The use of mobile phones to make purchases associated with travel is also high. Consumers are keen to use their handsets to buy tickets and source hotel accommodation.
Overall, BuzzCity says it has seen tremendous growth with mobile ads served more than doubling in 2011 with year-on-year growth of 139 per cent.
This time in 2011, just three countries (India, USA and Indonesia) were serving in excess of a billion ads a quarter.
However, by the end of 2011 another seven countries had broken into the Billion Club: – UK, South Africa, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Canada and Thailand.
GoMo News is still most impressed by the RIM BlackBerry’s lead in ads served in the UK. Its 69 per cent puts it way ahead of Apple, followed by Nokia then Samsung. So BlackBerry is very much a force to be reckoned with.
To access the full BuzzCity Report (in .pdf format) you can download it for free from here.
