Mobile – The Great Channel Equalizer

David Gill – Neilsen

Mobile is growing, but in what ways and what audience?  Mobile is growing, but one of the largest areas of mobile growth is mobile video.  This area experienced 57% growth last year as people viewed an average of 3 hours of mobile video each month.  This isn’t cutting down on TV viewing though – 59% of Americans with home internet access use TV and the Internet simultaneously at least once a month.  Subscription video content and downloaded video content are the areas of largest mobile video growth over the last year.  Teens overindex in the area of time spent with mobile video, with 36% of them spending 30 minutes to an hour on mobile video each month.

What’s driving this growth – better hardware, a better user experience, apps, sharing and discover, and expanded access to both devices and networks.

How big is it getting – There are currently 30 million people with smart phones, which is expected to nearly double by the end of 2010.  Neilsen is predicting that smart phones will be the majority of mobile phones by Q3 2011.  This is evident by the fact that year-after-year, people who get new phones are choosing smart phones.  Last year hit the highest marks ever in this area – 28.4% of people who got a new phone last year chose a smart phone.

Apps are obviously a growing area.  They have not been very successful on Blackberries since most of these are “enterprise controlled” and downloading apps on them are restricted or frowned upon.  However, the area of most growth is among young kids who are downloading free apps.  Neilsen predicts this area will only continue to grow further.  Texting is a huge area for teens, but particularly among 13-17 year olds.  They text nearly twice as much as any other group (see the photo of the chart.

Overall, Neilsen is keeping a sharp eye on how teens are using mobile – video, texting, apps – because they believe this will drive the future of mobile.