Children, their mobile habits and the new Monqi phone

It's weird to think that a mobile phone has been a major part of my communications life for the last 17 years. It's weird to look back at how I used to communicate and what my attitude was to telephony and technology. It's also weird to note how my chosen methods of communication have largely switched from voice to digital text based - email, blogging, social media, messaging. It's even weirder to think that some people have never used a 'dial' on a phone, think that it's perfectly normal to have a video call or to share photos that disappear moments after you've taken them. Nevertheless these things have happened.

I had a press release land in my inbox this morning. It's to promote a new smartphone, Monqi, aimed at children and parents being sold exclusively at Carphone Warehouse. The phone has a tracking app and parental controls. Their marketing team have put together quite a cute video showing a Granddad being taught how to use his smartphone by his grandson. It's a couple of minutes and it does give us a glimpse into the technology generation gap.



The press release goes further about their research and tells us by the age of 14, the average child will have sent more than 35k texts, 30k WhasApp messages and spent more than three sold weeks on video chat. The teenager will also have spent the equivalent of six months looking at their phone during that period, averaging 135 minutes use a day. Young people also spend over an hour a day browsing social media sites. They also expect a quick response to everything - typically within 15 minutes.

This does beg the question around what the long-term effects might be of such heavy phone use. I'm also wondering what behaviours or activities it's replacing. And for sure, parents need to be monitoring this and also their own behaviour as most of these habits are inherited by children from parents and other adults. Both adults and children in the survey said they were spending over two hours a day on their phones, with adults admitting that was too long. With children getting their first smartphone on average by the age of 10, and parents routinely using tablet devices and phones to keep their toddlers amused, these screen habits start young and die hard. I think we could all do with trying to find the right balance between screen time and other activities.

Other stats from the results revealed that 60%of  under-14s said their phone is the first thing they check in the morning and last thing at night. 40%  youngsters said they would feel 'lost' without their smartphone for a day with only 7% believing they would feel 'free' or 'relieved' without it.

Young respondents said the best thing about their smartphones was being able to stay in contact with friends and family, and playing games. That last one I have trouble with. There's not a lot of difference between some mobile games and the psychology behind a slot machine. The mindless manipulation of a screen with the reward being bright shiny lights and some noise.

Psychologist Dr Becky Spelman commented on the findings: "The survey found that children invest a great amount of importance in the ability to stay connected – checking their smartphones before bed and as soon as they wake in the morning.“Some parents may be alarmed by this, comparing their children’s experiences to their own childhood when technology was not as prevalent.“Panic is not the solution, nor is denial. It is inevitable that your child will use technology, so it’s your job to help them navigate the digital waters safely, and set boundaries."

"The survey also found that there are benefits to kids having a smartphone - parents can track their child’s location and have peace of mind knowing that they can be contacted if a problem arises.“This gives the youngster a new found independence – which is so important in an age of cotton-wool-parenting.”

Hmm, I'm not sure about the tracking and the cotton wool parenting thing. Kids will be able to outsmart a grown up trying to track them on a phone. But hey, maybe this generation is different in that their attitudes to being tracked has changed. Maybe the phone tracking thing has finally found its time and place in Monqi? A parent of today's 10 year old may be in their mid thirties and has spent most of their life with digital tools of some kind so their attitudes will be different from my generation.

I've written about a previous service doing something similar back in 2012 and prior to that, there were a number of devices and phones trying to do a very similar thing but in a less sophisticated mobile media world. I didn't think much of any of them if I'm honest.

Will Monqi do any better as they can offset the tracking element with access to games and communication channels to connect with their friends? I think they may have cracked it finally. The phone looks quite snazzy. We're in different digital culture with a new generation of parents and our phones can do a lot more than 5, 10 or even 15 years ago when the whole 'child tracking' thing started. Time will tell.

Sample size 1000. Research was commissioned by Monqi Smartphone. Source of information, and additional findings is here.

Day 7/30 #NaBloPoMo done

Essential reading from Tomi Ahonen – the Almanac 2010

Tomi’s done it again. He’s published his 2010 Almanac – a veritable smorgasbord of stats, information, graphs, charts, facts, figures and insight into the world of mobile. It’s 180 pages of mobile goodness, including 84 charts, sized to work as an ebook on your smartphone as well as your laptop. Very neat.

It is, in my view, essential reading for anyone with an interest in the world of mobile. Data in the e-book includes - Size of Mobile Industry; Customers; Handsets and Smartphones; Mobile Messaging including SMS and MMS; Mobile Internet; 7th Mass Medium; Music on Mobile; TV and Video; Gaming; Social Networking; Other services including News, Jokes, Adult, App Stores etc; Mobile Advertising; Voice calls; Enterprise services; Network Infrastructure; Digital Divide; and a Historical Timeline.

There is tabular data included - Index of Mobile Leadership for the 30 most advanced countries; major comparative data on 60 major mobile countries; the 25 countries with largest subscriber counts and 25 with highest penetration rates per capita; plus 25 countries with highest rate of 3G migration. Plus the 20 biggest mobile operator Groups.

The whole document is available for immediate download, has been released today, and costs only 9.99 Euros. The only place you can order it (it is not available at major booksellers like Amazon) is Tomi’s company website. 

Wanna know more and order it? – then check it out here.

Enjoy. I know I will!

Technorati Tags: tomi ahonen,almanac,statistics,mobile,2010

Heroes of the Mobile Screen – 7 Dec 09 at the BFI Southbank, London

Some of you may be wondering what I’ve been up to of late. Well, if you have, then I can reveal to you that I’ve been working on a new conference, Heroes of the Mobile Screen, which is on next month on 7 December at the rather wonderful BFI on London’s Southbank. And I’d love for you to spread the word (like our wonderful media partners), buy tickets and join the conversation.

The team behind the conference, Isabel Fox, Neil Robertson, Carlo Longino, Dominic Travers and yours truly are also involved in running Mobile Monday London, Swedish Beers Mobile Networking, Future of Mobile, Over The Air, Mobile 2.0 and Tech Media Invest events amongst other things.

The day-long event at BFI Southbank will differ from anything else around (at least that’s what we’re aiming for) and get the stakeholders of mobile involved in discussing the issues affecting them and their customers. Uniquely the event also has teenagers on stage to tell the industry what they want from their mobile, what they expect from their network operators and what’s most important to them in terms of their mobile life.

Heroes of the Mobile Screen is already attracting a number of high calibre ‘heroes’ with speakers and panellists answering the call from around the world, including Kei Shimada, JP Rangaswami and Kevin Marks, Belinda Parmar, Julia Shalet, Doug Richard and Harald Neidhardt are all confirmed. The speakers are listed here and the agenda can be found here.

Heroes of the Mobile Screen opens with a keynote from Kei Shimada sharing his experience of what’s happening in Japan and what we can learn from that here in the West. And continues with four core pillars supporting discussion throughout the day.

The money
What's making money, who's making money and what's being invested in and where the money's going to be in the future? The answers to all the questions we want to ask of successful mobile service providers and VCs.

The impact of social/location
What is the impact of social media and location technology? What do customers want, what are the business models, what are the solutions to privacy issues. Carriers are placing their bets in this area, but will they pay off?

Teenage heroes
Led by digital youth marketing expert Julia Shalet, this is a new format where we invite four companies to pitch their product, service or device live on stage to six teenagers and they tell us what they really think.

Real customers, real applications, real marketing
A double session with the first half covering customers and what they really want on mobile with a focus on women in particular with some new research and insight into what women want from Belinda Parmar of Lady Geek. The second half will cover mobile marketing and advertising, what's working, what's not and what's coming next.

I came up with idea around the event because we realised that most of the events I attend throughout the year all talk around the same subjects, with the same people and bring up the same issues, without resolution. It’s time for us to stop talking to ourselves, look out beyond our industry and make some changes for the better. I believe it’s important to engage our colleagues in marketing, web 2.0 and media as well as more of our mobile colleagues from throughout the value chain. The exciting stuff is going to happen when industries cross over – that’s where the innovation is. In putting the agenda together, we believe we have something that will appeal to a wide audience – whether you’re a director of marketing for an FMCG brand or a web developer toying with the idea of developing apps for android or iphone.  And to do that, we need to share real customer insight that we can use to make ours and others mobile lives better.

Tickets are now available online now for £99 (ex VAT and booking fee) at http://mobileheroes.net . We’ve kept the price deliberately low and it’s subsidised by sponsors who we’ll be able to announce shortly.

If you’re interested in sponsoring the event in some way, please get in touch with me via email.

If you’re interested in pitching your gadget, application or service to our teenagers, please email Dominic Travers to put your name forward.

We are keeping a waiting list for potential speakers and panellists. If you’d like to be considered, please contact me.

So get your tickets now and become a fan on Facebook or follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/hotms too.

Technorati Tags: conference,mobile monday,mobile monday london,events,london,mobile media,mobile marketing,mobile applications,mobile network operators,learning,networking

Over The Air – two days of mobile goodness

After a short hiatus, Over The Air is on again this year. It’s a veritable 34-hour mobile fest starting on Friday 25th September at 9am at Imperial College, London. Proceedings close at 7pm on Saturday 26th September.

“Over the Air is a grass-roots mobile developer event that is completely unique in the mobile industry events calendar – it is free to attend, is hands-on in the style of hackdays and barcamps, covers the cutting edge of current mobile development (as opposed to glossy future-speak or sales-pitches), and features bean bags, a big party and an overnight sleep-over. There will also be a competition at the end of the event for the best categories of applications created during the event, with many great prizes.

This year’s programme is currently being put together, but will once again feature technical presentations, tutorials, workshops, and break-out rooms. Expect topics such as Open Source, Java, Symbian (Series-60), Mobile Web, Mobile Ajax, Android, Mobile Linux, iPhone, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, etc. If you would like to run a session at Over the Air, please take moment to fill in our session suggestion form ( http://bit.ly/ota2009session ). (I believe there may be a couple of slots left if you’re quick - ed.) The sessions will be 55 minutes in length and while the focus of the event is on mobile development, we are also accepting sessions on user experience and design and we are putting together some sessions on mobile art including (hopefully) a mobile film festival.”

This year’s sponsors are Betavine, Lonely Planet, OMTP, Forum Nokia, Yahoo! Developer Network.

There are still places left so do sign up and join the fun with fellow mobilists from the UK, Spain and beyond.

Technorati Tags: over the air,barcamp,hackday,mobile,mobile technology,imperial college,mobile monday london,mobile developer,mobile development,mobile applications,mobile internet

UK shoppers in mobile bargain hunt | Mobile Content | News by Mobile Entertainment

Technorati Tags: m-commerce,research,e-commerce

I've just been reading today on Mobile Entertainment Magazine that Forty five per cent of BT's Broadband Anywhere ToGo smartphone customers have browsed the mobile web for goods or services from their devices.  What's more, a third have checked a price, searched for a review or helped them make their buying decision. And one-fifth have actually made a purchase online (although it doesn't specify whether online via mobile or PC internet).

The results came out of an ICM poll among 1,000 BT Total Broadband Anywhere customers between June 17th-24th 2008. Unfortunately I can't find a link to the study as the thing I'm interested in is of the customers who responded, how many were men and what category of shopping are we talking about here? Grocery shopping is a very different animal to fashion shopping or gift buying.

As a woman myself, I know I have very different shopping habits to any of the men in my life. I do a lot of shopping online, but that's for stuff that's easier to get online and is not particularly enjoyable to shop for - typically business books, stationery, PC consumables, vitamins and food supplements and the like. There isn't a creative process involved in the purchase of (m)any of these things except making sure you get the best price and reliable delivery. Fashion shopping online is more than a bit hit or miss with me except for the basics and actually, it's just easier for me to get that kind of stuff from my local High Street.

I still enjoy shopping though - as in going out for a few hours and hanging round the shops to see what I can find. This is not goal driven shopping, this is about shopping as a creative process, finding some inspiration, seeing what's out there - a mix of finding the right top, shoes, bag or whatever, that just matches perfectly with something you already have and oh, you just managed to get it for a bargain price too. It's about feeding all the senses during the shopping experience - sight, sound, smell, touch and probably to a lesser degree the taste, although a good cup of tea and a scone and jam does help fuel the shopping session.

There are not many e-commerce sites, let alone m-commerce sites that appeal to the creative nature of a shopping expedition. EBay does it to some degree as it takes a bit of practice to work out what things to look for and also what to buy without making huge mistakes on your purchase. An in-depth knowledge of brands, fabric quality and the psychology of ad-listing will help you in this respect. Another example is my weekly organic grocery delivery from Farmaround. I order fruit and vegetables weekly and I'm never quite sure exactly what's going to be in them as it's dependent on season and what's on offer. The creative process kicks in as there's an element of surprise on arrival and then I can start planning what I'm going to cook that week.

So my question is, if men and women shop in different ways (transactional vs discovery), how is that accounted for with the online shopping experience be that via mobile or PC?

Interested in mobile stats?

Yes? Then check out this very useful site that I stumbled upon today - IT Facts: Mobile Usage (they do have other IT categories, but obviously, mobile is the bit I'm particularly focussed on). Today's headlines include:

100.22m mobile subscribers in Japan in January 2007

55% of wireless customers have contacted customer support (I have no idea how this compares with other service related businesses or whether there are big differences between countries/regions btw)

25% of mobile phones shipped in 2011 to cost less than USD20 (half to Asia Pacific and the rest to emerging markets in Africa, South America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, with India predicted to be the biggest market within 5 years)

134m mobile gamers by 2010

Mobile Content and Services to generate USD150 billion by 2011

Mobile video to attract 100 million subscribers by 2010

1 billion handsets shipped in 2006 of which 300 million were music phones

35% of Americans use text messaging (A bit behind the 70%+ of Brits but I'm sure they'll catch up soon enough. It took a year or two for us to get to that point.)

174 million to get into mobile social networking by 2011

and lots more besides. Worth adding to your favourite RSS reader.