Research round-up: 7th July 2010

Changes In Mobile Usage Over The Past Two Years

The AdMob May 2010 Mobile Metrics report which revisits some of the major themes we’ve seen in our network in the past two years. The traffic in AdMob’s network has grown rapidly and globally, but there continue to be strong regional differences with devices used to access the mobile Internet. Smartphones have also grown rapidly, in May 2008 they generated 22 per cent of ad requests and in May 2010 smartphones accounted for 46 per cent of ad requests.  In May 2008, the iPhone and iPod touch generated 1.3 per cent of worldwide requests and the first Android handset was still six months from launching.  Two years later, the two platforms accounted for 42 per cent of all ad requests worldwide, driven by strong application usage.  
The report also includes a refresh of much of the network data that we have shared in our feature sections over the last several months.  Other highlights from the report include:

      92 countries generated more than 10 million monthly requests, up from 27 in May 2008.

      Traffic from North America, Asia, Western Europe, Latin America and Oceania all increased by a factor of at least 6x from May 2008 to May 2010.

      Smartphones accounted for 46 percent of traffic, feature phones for 42 percent of traffic and Mobile Internet Devices for 12 percent of traffic in May 2010.

      Motorola feature phones were the top three devices in AdMob’s network in May 2008, but in May 2010 the only Motorola device in the top ten was the Droid.   

      The Nokia N70 was the number one smartphone in AdMob’s network in May 2008. It dropped to number two in May 2009 and down to number four in May 2010, but continues to be the top smartphone from Nokia in AdMob’s network.

      The Top 5 iPad countries in AdMob’s network, based on the number of unique devices, were the United States (58 percent), Japan (5 percent), United Kingdom (4 percent), China (4 percent), and Canada (3 percent).

      A year ago, the HTC Dream (G1) was the only Android device broadly available.  In May 2010, the leading handset, the Motorola Droid, had only 21 percent of the Android users in the AdMob network demonstrating the broad range of Android devices available.     

 Mobile Metrics Blog
 http://metrics.admob.com/2009/10/placing-admob-metrics-in-context/.

Irish shoppers spend €2bn online

Irish people spent more than €2bn online last year, it has been revealed.Visa Europe says women are the highest spenders, with a quarter of them spending more than €1,000 while internet shopping.The average worker spends 55 hours a year browsing for goods between 9am and 5.30pm, more than one working week per year.Flights and holidays are the most popular purchases, with tickets second and CDs and DVDs third.

www.visaeurope.com/

European Businesses switch on to cloud computing

European enterprises are beginning to embrace the business opportunities offered by virtualising assets and accessing applications through the cloud, according to new research, commissioned by Brocade. The research shows that 60 per cent of enterprises expect to have started the planning and migration to a distributed – or cloud – computing model within the next two years.  Key business drivers for doing so are to reduce cost (30 per cent), improve business efficiency (21 per cent) and enhance business agility (16 per cent).  
The findings appear to confirm recent research by analyst firm IDC, which identified that cloud IT services are currently worth £10.7bn globally, a figure that is estimated to grow to around £27bn by 2013.
Other key research findings include:

·          More than a quarter of large organisations are planning to migrate a cloud model within the next two years; 11 per cent within one year

·          A quarter of organisations stated that the ability to consolidate the number of data centres was also a critical driver

The availability of bandwidth was also a deciding factor amongst 14 per cent of respondents  
www.brocade.com/brocadeone

British Companies Struggling With International Payment Systems, Hindering European Expansion

Chase Paymentech Europe Limited, a leading merchant acquirer and payment processor, announced results from a national survey today exploring the challenges faced by UK firms in ‘Customer Not Present’ (CNP) payments. The survey conducted for Chase Paymentech by independent research company, Dynamic Markets, showed that 30 percent of the 200 businesses questioned had international growth plans within the next one-to-two years, but that most did not have the payment systems in place to properly support European customers.  

Western European online retail sales are projected to grow 11 percent to reach £153 billion by 2014. On a regional level, several key European countries have seen record growth above the UK’s growth of 160 percent over the past few years:  examples include Spain at 199 percent and both France and Italy at 181 percent.* This has triggered a rush of UK merchants aiming to develop new revenue streams via international expansion into lucrative European markets.  

This, in turn, has lead to organisations looking to cross-border sales to build or increase their European customer base, however when questioned 79 percent of finance directors felt that their payment systems were not ready. Cross-border sales require merchants to present and settle in a wide number of Methods of Payments (MOPs). These include common options such as Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, American Express and Direct Debit but also regional offerings such as ELV in Germany and iDEAL in the Netherlands. Without the proper payment systems in place organisations are often required to work with multiple acquirers to trade in a range of markets or currencies. As well as adding administration cost and complexity, this process can also be a massive strain on IT systems and business processes.  

The lack of investment was not confined to domestic organisations looking to expand. 77 percent of companies who already traded internationally felt that their payment systems were not set up to meet the demands of European customers. Organisations who had expanded internationally via a merger or acquisition faired even worse with 86 percent stating that their CNP processing was fragmented, making operating outside of the UK even more challenging and expensive. 

www.chasepaymentech.co.uk

Brits’ photo sharing habits unveiled

The rise of ever more intuitive camera phones and digital cameras has helped Brits share photos more easily than ever but has not dampened our enthusiasm for good old-fashioned photo albums. This is just one finding from a survey of 2,245 consumers from across Great Britain conducted online by YouGov on behalf of Polylooks, Deutsche Telekom’s online photo agency.

68 per cent of 18-24 year-olds share images on social networks such as Facebook or Flickr, while under a third (30 per cent) of 45-54 years olds and just 12 per cent of over-55s do the same. Women (35 per cent) are slightly more likely than men (32 per cent) to share photos on social networks and women (29 per cent) are also more likely than men (20 per cent) to print out digital images to create a physical photo album.

Polylooks’ survey found that just over a fifth (21 per cent) say their phone’s camera satisfies their photographic needs and almost one in ten (nine per cent) has considered taking up photography as a career at some point in their lives with a similar number (ten per cent) thinking about potentially submitting their images via online “microstock” sites, such as Polylooks. Men (17 per cent) are almost twice as likely as women (nine per cent) to  spend more than £400 on a camera.

Londoners (12 per cent) believe their camera phone means photos are a ‘critical’ part of the way they interact with their friends and family, putting more emphasis on images than those in the rest of the south (six per cent) and Wales (five per cent).

www.polylooks.co.uk

UK Companies Could Do Much More To Engage With Web Visitors

A benchmark study, The Engaged Web, published today reveals many online brands are not seizing the opportunity to engage with visitors to their website by not integrating with social media channels, running online communities, blogging or providing ‘sticky’and personalised content. According to the study, published by EPiServer, only a third (34%) of the eighty leading companies investigated feature a community on their website and while blogs feature on 40% of sites, only 39% update their blog on a regular basis and only 19% clearly promote it to site visitors.
The Engaged Web report, available to download from http://www.episerver.com/en/Products/Engaged-Web-Report/, analysed 80 companies, ranked by Hitwise as being the most visited in the UK, spanning eight vertical sectors - Telecoms, Charity, Retail, Sport, Travel, Public Sector, Finance and Utilities - and scored them against a matrix of criteria for an in-depth assessment of their online engagement strategies. The criteria assessed a wide range of different components that make up an engaged website including communities, multimedia content, personalisation and social media.
The scores amongst the vertical sectors vary considerably. For example, every one of the ten sport sites feature a blog, and community and travel sites are close behind with 60% maintaining a blog to engage with their audience. Elsewhere however, the results are less impressive, with finance and telecoms failing to provide any ‘sticky’ content on their websites.
When it comes to the use of social media however, overall the scores plummet considerably, with brands seemingly failing to encourage online interaction with their visitors and customers or integrate and optimise their online presence. Only 15% of companies advertise their Twitter account directly on the homepage and only 19% draw attention to their Facebook fan page.
In terms of more traditional engagement methods, it was a relief to find the companies assessed performing better, although not exceptionally. When looking at engagement channels being promoted on the website, a phone number was the most commonly advertised (79%), followed by a web form (55%) and an email address (43%). But a mere 5% of the brands offer a much more interactive experience through live chat.
The full report can be downloaded at no charge at http://www.episerver.com/en/Products/Engaged-Web-Report/.
www.episerver.com.

Mobile banking usage to double in the next three years reaching 400m people by 2013

The number of mobile subscribers who use their phones for mobile banking will exceed 400m globally by 2013, according to a new in depth study by Juniper Research. This equates to double the number of users this year.

The results of Juniper’s detailed Mobile Banking Technology Strategies Survey showed that banks are laying the foundations for this rapid user take-up by rolling out services using SMS, mobile web and apps to provide additional channel choices for their customers.
The mobile banking report, however, stressed that some banks are limiting their options by offering insufficient mobile channel options for users, whilst others have yet to deploy mobile services at all. On the other hand, there are many banks in Europe, North America and the Far East that are actively delivering and promoting their services by significant above the line marketing campaigns.
Further findings included:
• Over 80% of banks currently offer some form of mobile banking;
• Far East and China will be the region with the highest number of users in 2015;
• Demand for on-the-move bank balance enquiries and advanced alerts will fuel SMS messaging growth.
Mobile Banking Whitepaper

Annual Mobile VoIP Minutes to Double Each Year, Reaching 470.6bn by 2015

The number of mobile VoIP minutes carried annually on 3G and 4G networks will rise from 15 billion minutes in 2010 to 470.6 billion by 2015, finds a new report from Juniper Research. Mobile VoIP traffic will see steady rises in all regions over the forecast period, but particularly in developed markets, due to the increasing ubiquity of 3G networks.

“There are several flavours of mobile VoIP,” says Anthony Cox, Senior Analyst at Juniper Research, noting that operators fear losing traffic to WiFi networks most: “WiFi mobile VoIP is potentially the most damaging of all VoIP traffic as it bypasses the mobile networks altogether,” he says. “We forecast that mobile VoIP over WiFi will cost operators $5 billion globally by 2015,” says Cox.

Other options for mobile VoIP carriage are via carrier alliances with mobile VoIP providers, or though an app downloaded to the handset or smartphone.

Further findings include:

·         Competitive and regulatory pressure will mean that traditional operators in developed markets will increasingly “bury the hatchet” and forge partnerships with VoIP providers.

·         Operator revenues from circuit switched voice will continue to diminish over the next five  years, though the rate of decline will not accelerate.

·         The market opportunity for high definition voice and advertising-based mobile voice services will be limited for the foreseeable future.

That Mobile VoIP is reaching the top of the agenda for mobile operators is borne out by the recent launch of Skype over 3G networks and its deal earlier this year with US operator Verizon. Operator sentiment varies however: “Even though a major operator, 3UK, touts the benefits of mobile VoIP, it will take some time for many operators, particularly in emerging markets, to accept it, since it represents loss of control over their own networks,” says Cox.

Mobile Voice whitepaper

Business people urged to be more vigilant with their online profiles

Nearly half of key decision makers in the UK do not proactively manage their online reputation according to new research by Profiled.com. 44 per cent of business people said that they didn’t take any measures to control the information available about them on the internet leaving their reputation open to interpretation from others.

Surprisingly, Brits are keeping pace with tech savvy Americans when it comes to online reputation management, with the latest research coming out of the US by Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life project showing that 57 per cent of adult internet users admitted to ‘Googling’ themselves compared with 56 per cent in the UK survey. However, Steve Wainwright, chief executive of Profiled.com, a website that helps business professionals manage their online reputations, says that British business people are still not doing enough to control their online profile.

But managing your online reputation is still considered a minefield for time-poor executives who are swamped by the amount of information on the internet. Of those surveyed in the US who admitted to ‘Googling’ themselves, 35 per cent said that their queries did not yield any relevant results whatsoever and only two per cent regularly checked what people were saying about them.

Profiled.com’s research, carried out by YouGov, also revealed that SME owners or those who have just started out in business and who are much more dependent on the profiles of their key individuals, are far more likely to manage their reputation online (57 per cent)  than those whose businesses are turning over more than £3 million (37 per cent).

Unsurprisingly, both the US and UK research found that young people are more likely to proactively protect their online reputations than people aged 45 and above.

Online reputation monitoring has risen by over 20 per cent since 2006 according to PeW’s US research and much of this can be attributed to the success of social networking sites and the increase in ways to access the internet.

www.profiled.com

37% Of UK Businesses Cite Inbound Nuisance Calls As A Major Daily Irritant

Almost 40% of UK businesses have identified inbound nuisance calls, such as unwarranted sales enquiries, as a major daily irritant, according to Natterbox, a new provider of Voice SaaS (Software as a Service).

The findings, from a survey of IT Managers, Operations Managers and Office Managers conducted by Natterbox partner EPA, revealed that the challenge of managing this problem is exacerbated by additional complexities such as 56% of businesses having more than one office, and 72% having more than 10 phones - all with their own individual requirements.

Whilst inbound nuisance calls negatively affect all sectors - with Legal and Finance organisations in particular featuring prominently in Natterbox’s market research to date - the damage in terms of lost time and revenue is greatest in SMEs (small to medium enterprises), given their relative lack of resources.

Small business operator Russell Holden says that his Ipswich-based company, HT Engineering, receives cold calls on a daily basis.  “It can be very frustrating,” he said.  “We have a fairly small team in our office, and really need to focus our energies on our customers.  But we find ourselves regularly wasting time taking calls that really don’t mean anything to the business.”

To tackle this problem, Natterbox has launched call blocking technology that can permanently block specified numbers, block calls from non-customers after office hours, challenge ‘number withheld’ callers to identify themselves, and stop automated recordings.

When asked their views on Voice SaaS as a business telecoms solution, close to 53% of the EPA survey respondents indicated that they were extremely positive about the benefits it could provide to their businesses. 

www.natterbox.com

Apple addicts increase iPod recycling

Apple gluttons have led to a surge of redundant iPods being recycled as fashion dictates the trendiest gadget. Leading online recycler mopay.co.uk has seen a 70 per cent rise in the number of iPods recycled through the site since the launch of the new iPhone 4G last week.

iPhone’s have become fashionable ‘must have’ products that users can listen to music on, download APS, play games, make calls, record sound and take photos. They have outstripped iPods in popularity and many consumers are finding themselves with a gadget they no longer need that can be recycled for cash through sites such as mopay.co.uk.

mopay exchanges all iPod models, from the early iPod Classic to the current iPod Touch. Consumers can expect to be sent cash or vouchers worth up to £60. Both working and non-working devices are accepted with value depending on the make, model and condition.

www.mopay.co.uk