LONDON – According to a report from the Mobile Marketing Association, smartphone penetration in Europe’s five largest economies (the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain) is growing between 30% and 40% per year.
The study found that the Symian platform continues to garner the greatest market share, just edging Apple Inc.’s iOS and Google Inc.’s Android OS. In addition, the survey found that 80% of consumers around the world access the Internet through a mobile device.
From a purchasing standpoint, the survey found that consumers in emerging markets are willing to use the capabilities in their mobile device instead of purchasing a digital music player or digital cameras. Consumers in emerging markets are also seen as having been exposed less to mass marketing efforts and thus more likely to respond positively to marketing messages. The report did note that attitudes towards digital marketing in general found people did not mind advertisements when they are shopping, browsing or consuming multimedia content. However, they do mind when they are focused on specific work related tasks such as e-mail, when they prefer not to be disturbed.
The findings also showed that 25% of people in Hong Kong use their mobile phones for shopping and browsing, compared with 28% in the United Arab Emirates, 24% in Italy and 19% in the United Kingdom. Morocco topped the list with a staggering 51% of consumers using a mobile device for multimedia consumption.
As for revenues the global mobile advertising market was worth $3.5 billion in 2010 and revenues in 2015 are expected to exceed $24 billion. The Asia-Pacific region has the largest market share, mainly due to Japan being a very mature and successful market for mobile advertising. This market share is set to decline as mobile marketing efforts are expected to increase in other regions around the world. Mobile internet display and search advertising is set to surpass text messaging by 2015. In 2010,text messaging accounted for 34.8% of revenues and is expected to decline to 23.3% by 2015.
