Using your mobile for basic financial transactions is taking off in a big way, according to research results released today. The Mobile Marketing Association and Luth Research claim that 1 in every 5 adults in the US use their phone for m-commerce. But how much of that is attributable just to mobile applications?
What’s the story?
The report, May 2010 U.S. Mobile Consumer Briefing, says that roughly 1 in 5 adult mobile phone owners in the US have used their phones for mobile commerce in the past month. There is something you need to bear in mind here, though: the MMA’s latest definition of “mobile commerce”, which it released today along with the research. It claims that “Mobile Commerce is the one- or two-way exchange of value facilitated by a mobile consumer electronic device (e.g., mobile handset), which is enabled by wireless technologies and communication networks.” And this covers buying an application for your phone.
So, for example, when the research says “1 in 5″ what it means is “17% of those surveyed have BOUGHT APPS”. And honestly, that says more about mobile applications than it does about mobile commerce.
Nevertheless, the other results from the research do show some good trends when it comes to m-commerce:
- 6% used their phone to receive coupons or discounts
- 6% used their mobile phone to purchase physical goods or non-mobile content or services – that’s what I was thinking about when I thought of m-commerce. It’s no “1 in 5″, but 6% is a very healthy number of people who have experimented with buying real goods over their mobile.
- BlackBerry and iPhone owners use m-commerce the most – over 50% of iPhone owners and 34% of BlackBerry owners have
- purchased content for their smartphone. Again this falls under the “apps” heading, not the “m-commerce” heading.
- When buying mobile content, 56% of people went with bill pay (operator based payments) and 43% used a bank or credit card.
- Perhaps most interestingly, the report claims that most respondents view m-commerce as “secure and trustworthy”
What we think?
I think padding your numbers by throwing mobile application behaviour in with mobile commerce behaviour is a bit disingenuous. Just because people buy applications doesn’t mean they trust m-commerce.
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Makes sense, right?…IF you include application purchases that is. Our numbers show in the US just under 30% of U.S. subscribers, (note subscribers, not unique users), pay for a data plan and then actually use the data plan for IP purposes by accessing the browser or applications. If 17% have utilized mobile commerce, which includes applications, this would translate to roughly just over half of all IP subscribers purchasing an application or some other product such as a ringtone. I’ll go with that.
It would have been nice to see the results without the inclusion of applications, but that is probably why we aren’t seeing that number. It must be such a very low number that the MMA didn’t want it published in the report.
However, this is the first step. It is a great step. I remember back in the days where research showed 17% of US subscribers used SMS…and the definition there was sent or received. The big word there was “received”. Now we are up to 70% and usage tops the world with the average subscriber now texting over 20 times a day in the US.
Great first step. Give this a few more years…
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