Inside Mobile Marketing

While these numbers are impressive and attest to the impact smartphones sales have had on various players within the Mobile Ecosystem, it is important for Mobile Marketers to remember that smartphones (especially Blackberries and iPhones) still represent a small percentage of the overall handset market in the U.S. and especially the World. Recent figures from M:Metrics/comScore peg overall smartphone penetration within the U.S. at around 6-7% of the total wireless subscriber base. On a global basis, RIM and APPLE combined only make up at best 1+% of the overall wireless subscriber market.

According to Gartner, Nokia is still king of the global smartphone market with 45% share of market and RIM follows second with 13.4% and Apple comes in third with 5.3% as of Q1 2008.

That said, marketers can certainly build campaigns that are targeted to and optimized for the Blackberry and iPhone toting crowd, however the greatest reach - especially with a younger demographic - still resides in targeting the lower to mid-range handsets in the U.S. from Motorola, LG and Samsung.

That’s a lot of bluetooth-enabled phones in the U.S. installed base!  (Although it should be noted that the U.S.’ second largest Carrier, Verizon Wireless, has and still does cripple the data transfer capabilities of many of its bluetooth-enabled handsets. (OBEX File Transfer profile and or OPP - object push protocol) I believe Sprint has done this on a couple of handsets as well in the past.)  Thus, you would think this would have Mobile marketers drooling over the prospect of utilizing the technology as a marketing tactic a lot more than seen today. But we haven’t.

Yes, there have been a few high-profile bluetooth marketing launches in the past here in the States (SEE CBS and Land Rover) and companies like Kameleon Technologies and Filter-UK have built up some impressive Client rosters (they’ve been doing this stuff in Europe since the early 90’s), but I really haven’t seen or heard too much in the way of hard results. 

I would assume the take rates would be fairly low as this new technology can be a bit challenging for the average consumer.  For example, how many consumers walk around with their bluetooth set to “discoverable” to accept incoming pings?  I recall seeing some figures months ago (I think from the NPD Group as well) stating that most consumers don’t use bluetooth even though their handset comes with it and when they do use it, it’s overwhelmingly for use with headsets.

Certainly to make bluetooth marketing work you need to use it in the right venue - e.g. events, shopping areas, airports, etc.  You need to ensure the call-to-action is prominently displayed and easy to follow  (this includes ensuring the opt-in message that is triggered on the receiving handset is very clear as to what the user is “saying yes” to accept.  Also - avoiding blue-spamming is a very important consideration - most bluetooth marketing vendors are able to discern between users that have already participated in a specific campaign versus those that haven’t.   One last bit, the content being sent to a handset via bluetooth terminals should also be evaluated in any campaign as many phones have issues handling J2ME applications for example.

When you take into account that the 3G version of the handset is expected to arrive sometime in June and the Company’s expansion plans to penetrate additional global markets, it’s not hard to fathom that Apple will indeed achieve its well publicized sales target of 10 million units by the end of 2008. This is certainly great news for mobile marketers as it will continue to apply pressure on handset OEMs and mobile marketing vendors to improve the usability of their current products and solutions.

While the iPhone is very slick (yes I will probably want one too when the 3G version arrives Stateside) it is not without its flaws from a Mobile marketing perspective. Here’s a running list to date:

1. No MMS. Consumers can take pictures, but cannot send them via MMS. I am betting that MMS will be added via a future software update, but as it stands today this missing feature precludes iPhone owners from participating in MMS marketing programs. (although a marketer could allow users to send entries via email if they wanted)
2. No video recording. For mobile marketers thinking of leveraging user generated video content (UGC) programs in the near future - you can forget the iPhone bunch.
3. No Flash support in the browser. I guess we can say that it’s not really like surfing the internet on your PC. Also - the YouTube application is NOT using Flash video, but rather H.264 streaming video.
4. No downloadable 3rd party content other than from “App-Store” application (this even precludes ATT’s Media deck). Off-deck Ringtones, games, applications are not able to be downloaded to the iPhone. Apple’s recent announcement to allow 3rd party developers to create applications for the iPhone still must have their creations vetted by Apple and distributed via the “App-store” application on the handset - (Walled Garden of a different flavor). WHY is this an issue for marketers? Let’s take a TV-based pSMS sweepstakes program as a use case in which a television program charges a consumer for participating in the sweeps program. When a premium charge is involved, many Carriers are requiring that something of value be delivered to a mobile consumer after they participate. Something of value can be a ringtone, wallpaper or factoid. iPhone users would only be allowed to get something of value via SMS. This may not sit too well with some consumers as the industry is still reeling from class-action lawsuits that take this matter into account. ANOTHER issue for marketers is that they have YET ANOTHER content development and distribution process to adhere to. The resources, time and costs required to execute a widespread marketing campaign across the iPhone as well as other established (albeit fragmented) platforms such as BREW can be daunting to say the least.
5. No WAP Push. This commonly used method to distribute content and/or trigger to open a mobile internet page on GSM Carriers will not work with the iPhone. (NOTE - Mobile marketers can however send URLs embedded within SMS messages to trigger the opening mobile internet pages - content providers still out of luck however with downloads.)
6. No bluetooth marketing. The iPhone currently only allows bluetooth audio - i.e. headsets to be paired with it, thus bluetooth marketing techniques will fall on deaf ears.
7. No GPS. LBS mobile campaigns will have to rely on other methods to identify an iPhone user’s location such as Cell-ID triangulation, WIFI location- which the iPhone uses (SEE SKYHOOK WIRELESS) or via radiowaves. SEE below - what if WiFi broadcast terminals are not in a user’s vicinity???
8. EDGE data network. For those marketers that do not create optimized mobile internet pages for the iPhone, consumers browsing the web via EDGE can run into some longer than desired page load times - and anytime a consumer has to wait for something to load - especially on their phone - the marketer runs the risk of losing that consumer. Let’s face it.. WiFi is not as ubiquitous as we would like to believe it is.

So there you have it. I’m sure most of this list will be moot in the near future perhaps even in June with the expected arrival of the 3G version, but as it stands today Mobile Marketers should consider these points when creating tactical marketing programs that target iPhone users.