Mobilestead Blog » Market Research

Half of all internet connections come from mobile phones!

Ilya Zatulovskiy — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:40:40 +0000

The TechCrunchIT post by Vic Gundotra who is the Vice President of Engineering for Google’s mobile and developer products, presents a lot of interesting data:

4 billion global mobile subscribers (ITU, 2009)
In 2009 half of all connections to the internet worldwide will come from a mobile phone. (eMarketer, 2008 and 2009)

This is a bit hard to believe even for me, as I would imagine that most cellphone customers don’t have a data plan.

MetroPCS is a prepaid cellphone company which offers fully unlimited plans starting at just $40/month. They have 5 million subscribers and just entered the New York market. I was aware of their offerings but not the data promotion for new voice customers: free internet for the first month and if they choose to upgrade, unlimited data for a flat rate. As a result nearly half of their users optin for this down the line. The big point here is simplicity as all consumers demand an unlimited data access just like with our home ISP.

The original article has a lot of interesting mobile stats from Google indicating current trends:

In a few years the mobile phone will become a mobile computer with the ability to make voice calls being just one of the features.
Following that, there will be a move to the web-enabled applications that live in the browser just as we have seen on the PCs. But for now the hype is still around installable native applications.

Wireless Provider Scorecard

Ilya Zatulovskiy — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 00:33:10 +0000

GigaOm has gathered financial results of major U.S. carriers. AT&T and Verizon are the obvious leaders. The iPhone has definitely helped AT&T to retain and gain new customers. Below is a copy and paste. Original data here.

T-Mobile (reported Feb. 27)
•    Wireless Revenue: $4.9 billion
•    Wireless Net Income: $483 million
•    Wireless Data Revenue: $905 million
•    Net Prepaid Adds: 355,000
•    Net Postpaid Adds: 266,000
•    Total Subscribers: 32.8 million
•    Blended Churn (contract and prepaid): 3.3 percent
•    ARPU: Postpaid $54, prepaid $23

Sprint (reported Feb. 19)
•    Wireless Revenue: $6.56 billion
•    Wireless Loss: $1.82 billion
•    Wireless Data Revenue: N/A
•    Net Subscriber Loss Prepaid: 314,000
•    Net Subscriber Loss Postpaid: 1.1 million
•    Total Subscribers: 49.3 million
•    Churn: Postpaid 2.16 percent, prepaid 8.2 percent
•    ARPU: Postpaid $56, prepaid $30

AT&T (reported Jan. 28)
•    Wireless Revenue: $11.5 billion
•    Wireless Operating Income: $2.7 billion
•    Wireless Data Revenue $3.1 billion
•    Net Subscriber Adds Prepaid: 800,000
•    Net Subscriber Adds Postpaid: 1.3 million
•    Total Subscribers: 77 million
•    Churn: Postpaid 1.2 percent, prepaid N/A
•    ARPU: Postpaid $59.59, prepaid N/A

Verizon (reported on Jan. 27)
•    Wireless Revenue: $11.1 billion
•    Wireless Operating Income: $3.57 billion
•    Wireless Data Revenue: $3.2 billion
•    Net Subscriber Adds Prepaid and Postpaid: 1.2 million
•    Total Subscribers: 72.1 million
•    Churn: 1.35 percent blended, postpaid 1.05 percent
•    ARPU: Blended $51.72

Ads work best on the iPhone

Ilya Zatulovskiy — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:30:22 +0000

The latest Mobile Advertising Report from market research agency GfK (and mobile social network Limbo) finds that users of Apple’s iPhone were more likely to recall and respond to ads than other mobile phone users.

Some other interesting findings from the study:

iPhone users are four times as likely to recall LBS (location-based service) ads as non-iPhone users.
Calling a toll free phone number published in the ads is the most common means of response; iPhone users called twice as much as non-iPhone users
One in seven consumers reported buying a product or visiting a store as a result of seeing a mobile advertisement; for iPhone users, more than one in four bought something as a result of seeing an ad

In UK you get your first cell phone at age 8

Ilya Zatulovskiy — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:00:13 +0000

According to the Telegraph, the average age for a kid to get his or her first cell phone is eight. Eight! I was lucky enough to get my first cell-phone at the age of 16. At that time this was a shared resource where one in five had one. A brick sized phone was a status symbol. This was still the age of the beepers and pagers.

According to the survey based on“1,435 people including 546 children aged seven to 15, 676 parents and 759 grandparents between January 16 and 26,” 35 percent of children own a cell phone by age eight. That only confirms that the E*TRADE Blackberry baby (Mobile Baby) is still ahead of the curve.

In the UK mobile technologies are more mainstream than in USA. There are obvious advantages to getting your kid a cell-phone, as you can always reach them. Carriers are offering services that are able to report the location of the device and plant it on the map. For example, Sprint Family Locator charges $5/month for this service and allows parents to set alerts based on time and location. So now you can make sure your kid goes straight home right after school or stays within one mile from the house.