EmailManual

I came across statcounter.com earlier this week which collects stats on web browser/OS, screen resolution etc. All the basic stuff you find in web server logs but analyised and the data made freely available to anyone who wishes to view it.

In terms of sample size, statscounter.com have circa 16.3 billion web hits each month which they analyse and segment by country.

What I found interesting on the site was their mobile vs desktop graph which shows that 12 months ago 98.85% of all web hits within the sample came from desktop computers where as now its only 96.19%, what fills the gap? Mobile. Mobile usage is growing (1.15% of hits 12 months ago, now 3.81% of all web traffic sampled) and no doubt you will have seen countless blog articles about how important mobile is likely to be in your future marketing mix. Some of this trend will doubtlessly be due to the rise in social networking which is already fully integrated to mobiles devices like iPhone, iPad, Andriod, blackberry etc. but consumers email usage patterns are also changing. At least 5% of all email received is now read on mobile devices (Source: Gauge April 2010).

This got me thinking, what’s the trend within mobile itself? Which devices are growing?, which are fizzling out? and what is the future of mobile likely to be? Conveniently statscounter also had the answer.

Figure 1. All mobile platform usage over period 2009-10 to 2010-10

So what does figure one show? It shows traditional mobile operating systems like symbian (Nokia), Sony Ericsson and Samsung OS are on the decline whilst the new generation BlackBerry (RIM), Android and iPhone unsurprisingly are rapidly being adopted. So which of these are growing the fastest?

Figure 2. New Generation smartphone adoption over 12 months.

A week ago thenextweb.com posted an article on the US sales figures of these three big players for the 3rd quarter of this year. Their findings were that some 43.6% of smartphones sold in the US in the third quarter of 2010 were Android devices. Apple sold only 26.2% of the total US smartphones for the three month period. In terms of units thats 9.1 million Android units were sold vs 5.5 million Apple smartphones, whilst Microsoft managed to sell 3% of the overall market with their phone 7 offering.

This tallys quite well to the actual web traffic figures that statscounter.com publish, in the last 12 months blackberry has gone from 9% to 18% of traffic, a doubling in web traffic market share. Apple however has shrunk in its presence from 30% to 23%. Although more iPhone units are being adopted each day, iPhone adoption as a percentage is dropping. Losing out to blackberry and massively to Android which according to thenextweb.com is selling nearly double the number of phones in the US and whos smartphone web usage has shot up from 2.5% to 10.5% in 12 months, that’s an increase of over 400%.

Don’t expect this to slow either, as more handset manufacturers see the power that Android offers both their consumers and them as manufacturers more are and will continue to adopt android. Infact some of the lower end phones are now coming with Android OS installed.

What does this mean for marketers?

• Develop your mobile marketing apps across the three main platforms.

If you are thinking about creating a new app to promote your brand, make sure you develop it across all three platforms, and especially consider developing for Andoid, the smartphone marketplace is no longer a 1 horse race consisting of iPhones and as time goes on less of your potential customers will have access to your app if you don’t go multi platform.

• Test your emails on mobile

You likely already test your marketing emails on various webmail clients, Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail etc. You should start testing on mobile devices too, how does your email look to the 5% and growing people who are opening your email on their phones?

• Consider investing in mobile marketing.There are many geosocial applications out on the market place now like facebook places, foursquare, geomium. which allow you to target people based on their location, if they are near one of your shops, let them know why they should visit. More and more potential customers going forward will have the capability to receive this form of advertisement as smartphones continue to be adopted in large numbers.

Further update: March 2011 figures briefly reviewed.