China will soon dominate local mobile search
Rating: Juniper report predicts 1.3 billion global users
Almost one third (30 per cent) of all mobile subscribers globally will be hooked up to local search by 2013, according to Juniper Research.
That equates to something like 1.3 billion users. Initially the North America and Western Europe will dominate but China will catch up quickly.The report argues that to build successful local search offerings you need to have all the relevant data in place. That includes Yellow and White pages; city guides; restaurant and entertainment guides; and traffic information.
On top of this you need access to comprehensive digital maps (both on and off road) plus a reasonable degree of coverage for points of interest (POI). Naturally the driver to building out local search services will be accompanying advertising.
Juniper Research reckons that local search will account for nearly half (43 per cent) of cumulative mobile search advertising revenues between 2008 and 2013. The company also predicts that user response rates to local search advertisements will be “significantly higher” than for mobile search in general but hasn’t released a figure here.
Juniper also says that there will be a surge of adoption in China which will lead to the region overtaking Europe and the US but doesn’t mention exactly how soon it expects this change to take place.
In terms of total revenues by 2013, the report predicts that this should reach $4.8 billion. That’s as long as services don’t try to overload local search with adverts which could lead to consumer resistance.
More details about the study ‘Mobile Search & Discovery: Opportunities and Markets 2008-2013’ are available on the company’s web site.
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