Analyst says WiFi has become a ‘must have’ item for millions of users

By Matt Hamblen
August 28, 2009 04:53 PM ET

Global shipments of Wi-Fi-enabled cell phones are expected to double between 2009 and 2011, at least partially due to the emergence of a slew of smartphones with Wi-Fi capabilities, according to an analyst at ABI Research in New York.

Analyst Michael Morgan said he expects about 300 million handsets that provide dual wireless capability for cellular and Wi-Fi to ship during 2011, up from about 144 million expected to ship this year.

Morgan added that he expects about 85 million Wi-Fi-capable smartphones to ship globally this year — of 170 million total smartphones. The Wi-Fi-capable smartphones include Apple Inc.’s iPhone and other popular offerings. Morgan noted that the number of smartphones shipped is expected to grow by about 20% each year for the next several years, and predicted that fully 90% will have Wi-Fi capability by 2014.

“A doubling of Wi-Fi enabled cell phones in two years is ridiculously high,” Morgan said. “Wi-Fi has become a must-have item much as Bluetooth did earlier.”

Part of the value of having a Wi-Fi handset these day is that the number of hot spots in coffee shops and other buildings is exploding while more and more homes and even planes support the technology, he noted. Eight U.S. Airlines now offer Wi-Fi access on more than 500 flights, with the number expected to grow to entire carrier fleets in two years.

Following AT&T’s lead, Verizon Wireless recently made 30,000 Boingo Wireless Wi-Fi hot spots available to some 9 million of its residential customers on certain plans.

Morgan said Verizon is “warming up to Wi-Fi” and can be expected to support more smartphones and handsets with dual mode capability for Wi-Fi. Even AT&T was at first leery of Wi-Fi, fearing it would take traffic off from their cellular networks, Morgan said. But AT&T was “thrown into the [Wi-Fi] pool by the iPhone” after it first surfaced two years ago, he added.

Source from: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9137235/Wi_Fi_cell_phones_expected_to_double_in_two_years?taxonomyId=1

Mobile marketing is a new area in interactive marketing. It has a great opportunity as people often own a cell phone all the time. It is a broad channel which includes SMS, MMS, mobile internet, applications, location based services and Bluetooth marketing.

Mobile marketing is growing rapidly. Marketers are using this in various areas, such as:

• Response marketing and fulfilment
• Customer relationship management
• Sales promotion
• Interactive marketing, such as voting and competitions
• Ticketing and couponing
• Advertising

These campaigns are offered both exclusively on mobile and in integration with other media, including online, email, direct mail and broadcast channels.

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Definition of mobile marketing

According to the Mobile Marketing Association,

“Mobile Marketing is the use of the mobile medium as a communications and entertainment channel between a brand and an end-user”
- Mobile Marketing Association

Mobile marketing basically have two definitions. Firstly, a relatively new meaning is to describe marketing on or with a mobile device, such as mobile phone. It is an example of horizontal telecommunication convergence. Another more traditional definition is to describe marketing in a moving fashion, e.g. technology road shows or moving billboards.

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Major classification

1. Mobile advertising via MMS
MMS mobile advertising can contain a timed slideshow of images, text, audio and video. This mobile content is delivered via MMS (Multimedia Message Service).

2. In-game mobile marketing
There are three major trends in mobile gaming: interactive real-time 3D games, massive multi-player games and social networking games. Brands are now delivering promotional messages within mobile games or sponsoring entire games to drive consumer engagement. This is known as mobile advergaming or Ad-funded mobile game.

3. Mobile web marketing
Advertising on web pages using mobile devices is also a trend. Google, Yahoo and other major mobile content providers have been selling advertising placement for years.

4. Bluetooth
Using bluetooth for marketing has the advertantage of permission-based and higher transfer speeds. Bluetooth is a radio-based technology thus consumer will not be billed (i.e. free of charge).

5. Location-based services
Location-based services (LBS) are offered by some cell phone networks as a way to send custom advertising and other information to cell-phone subscribers based on their current location. The cell-phone service provider gets the location from a GPS chip built into the phone, or using radiolocation and trilateration based on the signal-strength of the closest cell-phone towers (for phones without GPS features).

Article extracted from: http://mobilemarketing09.blogspot.com