Deloitte's 2016 UK Mobile Consumer Report is out 'There's No Place Like Phone'

And it's a treasure trove of the latest consumer trends when it comes to mobile usage in the UK. Well worth a look if you're interested in the British consumer at all.

From the executive summary (emphasis my own and some minor edits):

"This year’s report marks the end of the smartphone growth era, and the start of its consolidation. A mere nine years after the launch of the first full touchscreen smartphone, adoption is nearing a plateau, at 81 per cent of UK adults, and 91 per cent of 18–44 year olds.

The smartphone user base is approaching an unprecedented peak. No other personal device has had the same commercial and societal impact as the smartphone, and no other current device seems likely to. While the base may plateau, relentless innovation continues at device and network levels. Devices are likely to incorporate more functionality and get even faster. Biometric sensors, particularly fingerprint readers, are likely to see widespread adoption.

Over a quarter of smartphones now have a fingerprint reader, of which three quarters are in use. The majority of phones are now connected to 4G, and cellular networks are getting ever faster, with headline speeds now at over 300 Mbit/s.1 As speeds rise, ever more latent, high bandwidth applications become viable. It is now as easy to read the news on a phone as it is to live stream a breaking news event from a smartphone.

Businesses and consumers are still determining how best to use these devices. For the former, a common dilemma is over whether to use apps or websites. The typical UK user downloads 20 or fewer apps.

Our research suggests that apps are not the right approach for every business.

Consumers, who collectively look at their smartphones 0.4 trillion times per year, still need to identify how to use their devices in a balanced way, at a level that suits them, their other halves and colleagues. It is the sleek digital Swiss army knife that can be used at every stage of the day. How people will use their devices to communicate will be driven by consumers.

The traditional voice call has become steadily less popular over the last four years, and usage of email, social networks and instant messaging has risen in tandem."

Click here for the PDF.

SMS is dead. Long live messaging.

You may be forgiven for thinking mobile marketing is all about adverts on web pages seen on a mobile device or in-app advertising or sponsorship. For those of us who’ve been in the game for longer than we care to remember, SMS started the whole mobile marketing sector off back in 1999 yet it is often overlooked for newer ways to use mobile (i.e. mobile adverts) or for older formats (email, print, TV).

But it isn’t quite dead yet. I still use it – although not nearly as much as I used to. My sister is an avid texter and my nieces are still at it. However, for the first time, there has been a downturn in text messaging in the UK.

The main culprits for the downturn is the rise of messaging services like WhatsApp. It makes sense. As we find other, cheaper, more convenient ways to chat to each other, SMS services will get replaced. Why pay for SMS when you can have WhatsApp for free and you’re paying for mobile data anyway? I suspect Facebook messenger and email also have a part to play in this picture.

Let’s look at this growth with a bit of historical context… According to the Mobile Data Association (and they got their figures direct from the network operators), annual consumer usage 1999-2009 was as follows:

1999 - 1 billion; 2000 - 6.2 billion; 2001 - 12.2 billion; 2002 - 16.8 billion; 2003 - 20.5 billion; 2004 - 26 billion; 2005 - 32 billion; 2006 - 41 billion; 2007 - 56.9 billion; 2008 - 78.9 billion; 2009 96.8 billion

As you can see from the graph, SMS was still growing, year-on-year, at a healthy pace in 2010 and 2011. And even though there has been a drop-off, we’re still looking at about 120 billion SMS every year in the UK or thereabouts. That’s 4.5 times more than what we were using 10 years ago. That’s a lot of SMS.

So let’s not dismiss SMS quite yet. When you look at the annual figures, they’re still very healthy so I encourage you to think about SMS as part of your marcomms effort. After all, plenty of your customers are still using it and there may still be value in connecting with them via SMS – especially for customer service – another area often overlooked.

What is particularly exciting for us mobile marketers though, is how much activity is happening on mobile devices. Check out that email figure – 65% of us are accessing email on our smartphones. It really is huge. So if you haven’t ‘gone mobile’ yet, I really think it might be time for you to do so.

I was asked a few years ago what my advice would be to the first time mobile-marketer in terms of ‘going mobile’ and I said to make sure their email marketing was mobile friendly. I think the advice still stands. If you do nothing else in mobile, please make sure your email works on handsets – and test for lower end devices. Not everyone has the latest iPhone or Samsung Galaxy!

Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010 are go!

STOP PRESS: The competition is now open to entrants from Spain as well as the UK, The Netherlands and Portugal. The closing date remains the same - 22 August 2010.

And it’s bigger and better than last year and Mobile Monday London is very pleased to be supporting this year’s Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010 competition. And as part of that, I’m helping to organise again this year and will be part of the UK jury to find the best mobile internet start-up to put forward to the final in Amsterdam in September.

You can read some bits and pieces about last year’s event here.

The aim of the competition is to find the best mobile internet start-up across the UK, Portugal and The Netherlands and reward the winner with Euro 100,000 and the runner-up with Euro 50,000. A pretty decent prize-fund I’d say. And in accepting the prize, you don’t have to give away IP or equity to Vodafone.

The competition opens today and closes on 22nd August at midnight. But please don’t leave your entry until the last minute. All entries need to be completed in English and you do need to adhere to the Terms and Conditions. The actual competition Ts & Cs are only about 6 pages – the rest of the document relates to the Ts & Cs for Vodafone’s Widget platform which you must also agree to. Yes, it’s a long document, but please give it the once over to make sure you’re happy with it. I’ve read it and I can’t see anything particularly nasty in there, but I’m not an expert on these things, nor am I a lawyer so don’t just take my word for it.

The application form is pretty straight forward but I highly recommend that you take some thought before you fill it in. There is limited space, and limited time for the judges to read and take in what you’re writing, so it means you need to to think through clearly what your proposition is, describe the features but make sure you also state the benefits as these are what make you attractive to customers.

You can only enter once and once you’ve entered, you may not amend your entry.

Entry is now open at http://www.vodafonemobileclicks.com/ and you can follow progress of the competition on the VMC2010 official twitter account. And if twitter’s your thing, you can also follow Mobile Monday London there too.

The 5 judging criteria are:

• originality, creativity and innovation;
• technical and operational feasibility;
• economic and financial viability;
• value to end-users;
• and finally, on the quality of the management team.

If you have specific questions or concerns, please get in touch with me and I’ll do my best to answer your questions or put you in touch with someone who can.

Entry Criteria:

• Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010 is open to any individual aged 18 or over resident in the Netherlands, Portugal or the United Kingdom and to Dutch, Portuguese and UK-based start-up companies, businesses, institutions and all other organisations.
• Participants must be or must have the intention to become a start-up enterprise/ business in the field of mobile internet products or services. Start-up in this context means that the enterprise/business must be less than 3 years old.
• Each participant may submit only one entry.
• Entries from Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2008 and 2009 may resubmit to Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010.
• There is no charge for entry

There are three stages to the contest:

1. We will collate all the entries and the local jury will review them to get to a shortlist of 5.
2. We will then review the shortlist to find a single company or individual to put forward to the final.
3. The UK finalist will present at the final to be held at Picnic in Amsterdam on 24 September 2010 alongside the finalists from The Netherlands and Portugal.

Last year we were able to put three companies through to the final at Picnic. They were Audioboo, Rummble and Woobius. Woobius came third and walked away with a Euro 25,000 prize. And Audioboo and Rummble have both done very well since last year’s contest, both recently raising funds and growing their respective businesses.

We asked all our UK finalists from VMC2009 what they thought of the competition last year and whether or not it was worth entering.

Mark Rock from Audioboo tells us: "Vodafone Mobile Clicks was one of the freshest competitions of 2009. To have a mobile network operator embrace the start-up community in this way was fantastic. The quality of the judging through 3 rounds was excellent, if a little gruelling, And the support & help given all the way through to being taken to Amsterdam to compete in the finals (we didn't win, by the way) was above and beyond the normal competition process. Vodafone Mobile Clicks is worth the effort"

And Andrew Scott from Rummble said: "Vodafone put considerable energy behind the Mobile Clicks competition which definitely contributed to our profile .. it was also a lot of fun!"

And here’s a couple of pictures of the Woobius team with their prize cheque. Well done Woobius!

So, get the thinking caps on and get entering. The Mobile Monday London team wishes you the best of luck!

The official press release is below.

VODAFONE MOBILE CLICKS 2010 COMPETITION ANNOUNCED

Search to find best mobile internet start-up across three European markets is on

27^th July, 2010. Vodafone today announced the launch of Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010, a competition to identify and develop the best, most innovative mobile internet start-ups. Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010 will run across three European markets - Netherlands, Portugal and UK.

The contest is open to any start-up with a great idea for a mobile site, service or application and entrants can compete for the €150,000 prize fund by submitting entries to www.vodafonemobileclicks.com. The competition is open now, and the closing date for entries is midnight, August 22nd, 2010.

Each entry will be judged on five criteria: originality, creativity and innovation; technical and operational feasibility; economic and financial viability; value to end-users; and finally, on the quality of the management team.

The judging will take place over three rounds. Each competing market will draw up a shortlist of their five best local submissions, a winner will be selected from each shortlist and finally all local winners will be invited to represent their country in a live final at the PICNIC Festival in Holland on September 24^th, 2010, where the overall winner will be chosen by a panel of mobile industry experts, including Om Malik, founder of the GigaOM Network, Russell Buckley, VP Global Alliances at Admob, and Rudy de Waele, Founder of dotopen, the Mobile Premier Awards and co-founder of the Mobile 2.0 Conferences in San Francisco and Barcelona.

Launched in 2008, Vodafone Mobile Clicks is a Vodafone initiative designed to accelerate innovation in the mobile internet sector across Europe. It is now the biggest mobile start-up competition of its kind.

“Through initiatives like Vodafone Mobile Clicks and our wider developer outreach programme, we’re finding ways to help stimulate, grow and commercialise the innovation that is at the heart of the mobile ecosystem,” said Lee Epting, Director of Content Services at Vodafone Group. “Vodafone Mobile Clicks is really about empowering ambitious, young start-ups to develop their ideas and accelerate them into market. I’m excited to be judging another year of inspiring entries from entrants across Europe.”

Previous Vodafone Mobile Clicks winners include Layar, an Amsterdam-based company who developed an augmented reality service that allows mobile customers to see information on nearby points of interest – for example houses for sale, popular bars and tourist information – by simply looking through a phone’s camera lens. The service launched in June 2009, and throughout 2010 the platform has seen 20% month-on-month growth. Layar has recently announced a strategic partnership with phone manufacturers LG and Samsung.

For further information about the Vodafone Mobile Clicks 2010 competition, or to enter your company, go to: http://www.vodafonemobileclicks.com

Technorati Tags: Vodafone Mobile Clicks,vodafone,competition,start-up,mobile internet,mobile applications,entrepreneurship

Ofcom's Nations and Regions Communications Annual is out now

This is Ofcom’s third annual review of the markets for television, radio, and telecommunications, showing detailed data for the nations and regions across the UK.

Some key points from their press release which you may find interesting (with my comments in italics) are:

• In the previous two years, take-up of broadband was strikingly lower in rural than in urban areas. This year, the data suggest that, taken as a whole, rural areas have caught up – in fact, slightly overtaken urban areas. Overall, 57% of UK homes now have a broadband internet connection, up from 45% a year earlier. I think this is great news as it has felt that broadband uptake had remained relatively static. I'm interested to see how the broadband providers cope with the increasing popularity of the BBC iplayer and other TV channel's video offerings. It's using up a *lot* of bandwidth.


• There are other striking patterns; in the UK’s biggest cities, such as Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Liverpool, and Manchester, an ever-larger segment of the population is living without the use of fixed-line telephony. Across the UK as a whole, 87% of homes have a fixed-line telephone (down three percentage points from last year). The 12% of homes which rely on mobile phones only are able, increasingly, to access broadband through wireless technology. I still have a landline but I barely use it - I only have it for accessing broadband as I can't get cable in my area. It seems to me to be a terrible waste of money (and a nice little earner for BT) to keep the line but it's essential thus far.


• People are also using broadband to download video. This report suggests that 30% of adults have taken advantage of video downloading, although on a city-by-city analysis, the hottest hotspots are Aberdeen, Dundee and Edinburgh. I thought this figure would have been higher - I need to explore this section in the report further.


• There are many other such fascinating points of detail in the pages that follow. Social networking, as Ofcom has previously reported, is now enjoyed by one in five UK adults. This report suggests that the people of Northern Ireland are among the UK’s most avid social networkers. Across the UK, these sites are most popular among young people. I wonder if that's because the Northern Irish like to chat?! (I have pals from North of the Border in Ireland and they *do* like to talk... I'm jesting! But seriously, if you think facebook is huge in the UK now, it still has some way to go in the market place if we're still at 20% penetration of usage.


• Another big trend is the fact that more than 85% of UK homes now have digital television – ten percentage points higher than a year ago and a significant milestone to have passed in the year in which digital switchover began, in Copeland, Cumbria. At the same time, take-up of digital radio continues to grow, with one in five adults reporting that they have a DAB digital radio at home. Digital here we come. Now if only the signal were reliable in my area... oddly enough, I can actually see the Crystal Palace mast from the end of my road but my signal can be patchy despite the proximity. And if I have my laptop and mobile going at the same time, I quickly get interference on the signal. Sigh.

Anyway, the Ofcom report is a must-read to get the lowdown on the state of the communications market in the UK. It's a veritable mine of well-researched information. Oh, and even better, it's free!