May saw an important event for the internet industry: it was in that month that Warsaw’s Fabryka Trzciny was home to the InternetCEE conference, one of the landmark events of this kind in this part of Europe. The topics raised at this year’s conference were varied as usual, but nearly all presentations and talks were consistently orbiting around the subject of the two most current issues – the effectiveness of marketing in social networks and the potential lurking in the mobile internet. Today’s entry will shortly discuss the latter.
Once again, we’ll start with the more obvious stuff. Mobile telephony has become so commonplace that its advertising potential is now hard to overestimate. In many markets, mobile networks penetration exceeds 100%, which means a frequent usage of more than one cell phone per person. More importantly, however, the ‘cell’ revolutionized our everyday life and became an inherent part of it. According to the estimates of the Czech Telefonica O2, mobile telephony penetration among the most active consumer groups in this country doesn’t fall below 93%. As many as 91% of the Czech users declare that they almost never part with their mobile phones, and 92% cannot imagine their normal lives without them. And we must bear in mind that the Czech market is only one of the available examples.
Chart 1. Mobile telephony penetration in age groups – Czech Republic; source: O2 Telefonica
And now for the less obvious. Mobile telephony penetration data is only a prelude to a much larger discussion. It mainly concerns the possibilities that mobiles offer to the marketers. What kind of possibilities? To put it simply: only three and as many as three: massSMS, massMMS and mobile internet. The first two are already known far and wide, their potential lays bare to everyone. The mobile internet is an entirely different story…
And it is at this moment that an important question must be asked, a question that the entire industry must face. Do we really know what we mean when we use the increasingly popular notion of the ‘mobile internet’? If we turn a critical eye on the data, it will be clearly seen that it is not merely a niche phenomenon, but almost a planktonic form, yet to mature to its key online marketing role in yet a few years to come. According to the gemiusTraffic results (OK, here comes the boasting bit), the share of page views made from mobile devices on websites participating in the research practically doesn’t exceed 2% on any of the markets. This fact inevitably triggers the feeling that the debate about the business dimension of the mobile internet is by far a premature one, though of course not entirely groundless.
Chart 2. Share of Page Views generated by visitors using mobile devices and PC computers; source: gemiusTraffic, April 2010
And what about the users themselves? A few months ago we asked Polish online population about their frequency of internet usage via the mobile. You could say the results we obtained are even too self-evident. Despite the fact that 44% of respondents declared that they had used the mobile internet on many occasions, as many as 34% admitted that they had never used this kind of service. Even more interesting information is delivered by those who have already tasted the mobile Net. Over 47% of them declare that they are not very likely go through this experience again, and 31% is absolutely sure they will not do it.
Should this state of affairs rise any concerns? Not really, hence the problem does not lay in the fact that the mobile internet is still a toddler. The true problem is the tendency to overvalue its present potential. The big message is: restrain from thoughtless awe and roll up your sleeves. This concerns everybody – from telephone providers, who are generally unwilling to reduce the internet connection charges, to publishers, who are only beginning to invest in research and development of mobile sites. Because there’s plenty of work to be done before the Net can really fit in your pocket.
