Mobile Content Usage

Netflix isn't the only video service eating up North American bandwidth, although it is the largest, according to [download page] Sandvine's "Global Internet Phenomena Report 1H 2013." The report reveals that Netflix accounts for 32.3% share of North American peak downstream fixed access traffic, a slight dip from H1 2012, with YouTube next at 17.1%, up from 13.8% in the researchers' H1 2012 study. When it comes to mobile traffic, the opposite trends are true: YouTube leads with 27.3% share of peak traffic, but is down from 31%, while Netflix is far back at 4%, but up from 2.2% the prior year. Read more »

Senior executives from around the world aren't that enthusiastic about social media marketing, according to new figures released by Doremus and the Financial Times from their annual "Decision Dynamics" survey. 51% of respondents feel that advertising in social media is more intrusive than advertising in a magazine or newspaper, while only one-third believe that a social media presence enhances a company's reputation. The study results indicate that, in general, while executives are embracing online and mobile activities, they're not doing so at the expense of traditional media. Read more »

Wealthy consumers are as likely to make purchases in-store as online, and few have embraced showrooming, loosely defined as the practice of checking out a product in-store before buying online. According to new research from the Luxury Institute, 78% of wealthy consumers (earning at least $150,000 a year) had bought something in a store in the previous 12 months, and 77% had ordered something online via computer. Only 1 in 4 reported buying online after checking out merchandise in-store (the study did not mention the use of a mobile device in-store). Read more »

Some tablet owners are spending a significant amount of time watching video on their devices, details GfK in a new data release. According to the study, among tablet owners, Millennials (born 1977-1994) spend on average 23% of their total video viewing time (time spent watching video on any device, including TV, in a 7-day period) with their devices. Millennial tablet owners are far more engaged with video on their devices than other generations: Gen Xers (born 1965-1976) spend 16% of their video viewing time with them; Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964) spend 11%; and pre-Boomers (born before 1946) spend 6%. Read more »

79% of smartphone owners qualify as "smartphone shoppers," says Google in new study results, using their devices to assist with shopping at least once a month. 84% of these smartphone shoppers use their devices to help them while they're in a store, equating to about 2 in 3 smartphone owners overall using their devices in-store. The most common way these consumers go about their research is through search, per the study, with store and brand websites less popular. That pattern also applies when smartphone owners compare prices, discover promotional offers, and find out where products are sold Read more »

Roughly 7 in 10 smartphone and tablet owners have tried to make purchases on their device, indicating a high degree of comfort and enthusiasm with mobile commerce, according to a new study commissioned by Jumio and conducted by Harris Interactive. However, two-thirds of this group report having abandoned a purchase due to a problem with the checkout experience. Most commonly, these respondents said they didn't feel comfortable entering their credit card information (51%), while many also blamed a checkout process that took too long (47%) or that was too difficult on their device (41%). Read more »

66% of small businesses are putting mobile technology to use in some way to market and/or operate their businesses, according to survey results from Constant Contact. The most common ways of doing so are to optimize social media marketing (73%) and email marketing (71%) for mobile devices, with far fewer (34%) offering mobile-optimized websites. The results come soon after research from eWayDirect, which similarly found that slightly less than half of B2C marketers were optimizing emails for mobile. Read more »

Mobile phone owners are reluctant to share data over privacy fears, and a majority wouldn't even lend their phone to a work colleague, according to research from McAfee. But despite these privacy concerns, many smartphone owners are not employing a range of security measures to safeguard themselves against privacy breaches. A new study from Consumer Reports finds that only 22% of smartphone users have installed an application to locate a missing phone, just 15% have installed antivirus apps, and less than 1 in 10 have an app that can delete the contents of their phone remotely. Read more »

The influence of mobile devices on local content continues to grow, details the Local Search Association in a new study [pdf] prepared using comScore data. According to the study, 48% of mobile phone users accessed local content in December 2012, up from 42% a year earlier. And that figure should only grow alongside rising smartphone penetration: smartphone users were more than 5 times as likely as non-smartphone users to access local content (77% vs. 14%). In fact, a significant 24% of traffic to online directories and other local resources came from mobiles and tablets in December 2012, quadruple the 6% share from a year earlier. Read more »

Texting is the most common activity on a mobile phone after talking, accounting for roughly 1 in every 7 minutes spent on a mobile phone, per data from Nielsen. Recent research from Experian Marketing Services suggests that 18-24-year-old smartphone owners send and receive an average of almost 4,000 text messages per month. But texting may be on the decline: last year, Americans texted each other 2.19 trillion times, down 4.9% from the prior year, after at least 3 consecutive years of growth, according to [pdf] survey results from CTIA-The Wireless Association.. Read more »