m-Singapore is checking in, is your brand?

The world is constantly changing and much of that is affected by new technologies. No other medium ignites more change than mobile. Across the globe, people are finding that the mobile device is the first screen that they are exposed to, their primary point-of-access to the World Wide Web.

Mobiles also serve as the gateway to an abundance of services available on the go. With the mass of services going mobile, including music, banking, video, transport & navigation, it is important to know how big the mobile web really is.

According InMobi’s April network data for Singapore, the local market grew 18% from January to April 2011, pushing it into the ranks of the most advanced mobile ecosystems in the world. In this advanced market, Smartphones represent an astounding 89% of all impressions.

A similar network report from Buzzcity shows an oligopoly on the mobile market with both Blackberry and Apple holding a shared total of 64.56% amongst manufacturers. Smartphone operating systems, like iOS, Blackberry OS and android, represent 68.62% majority on the Buzzcity network. Buzzcity served a sizeable 73 million ad impressions in Singapore alone in May 2011.

With all this talk of ad impressions and mobile users in our island nation, we know that mobile is huge here. What these network data serve to prove is that there is an increasing number of mobile users that have access to the web while on the move, through the use of advanced and smartphones. But how much activity is actually conducted on the mobile web?

At the recent MMAF Singapore, Hannu Versakalo, CEO of Zokem, presented the results of a survey conducted by Zokem. From the report, 92% of mobile web users used web-based apps for news, 91% for search and 77% of mobile web users used them for social networking. With data plans becoming more affordable and flexible, the number of people who access the web on mobile will increase.

This will also be incited by the increasing affluence of the country’s consumers. Zokem states that only 13% of mobile data usage is through wifi – data plans drive the majority of mobile data usage.

In a prediction by The Nielsen Company, the use of internet on mobile devices is anticipated to boost general internet usage as 59% of consumers plan to access the mobile internet this year.

There is an increasing demand for services to be brought on to the mobile medium. Take the financial services sector as an example. In a recent Buzzcity Q2 2011 report, mobile internet users are receptive to using their mobile phones for services like financial transactions. 45.91% of respondents in the Buzzcity survey want to be able to transfer money, take loans and pay bills on their mobile phones.

One popular service that is most desired on the mobile platform is that of money remittance; the Buzzcity survey cited 21.42% of consumers ranking this as the most desired service.

Even though banks and other financial service providers still have to work on notifying their customers of these services available on mobile, this is a growing trend in the region for standard services to migrate to the mobile platform.

Some consumers have even embraced doing secure transactions like banking on the mobile platform. While others are still distrusting towards current mobile-based financial services systems, it is only a matter of time before service providers come up with a system and measures that address these concerns, thus making a full transition on to mobile.

One thing is for certain - the superior interfaces of smartphones combined with the huge growth of the industry will lead to more and more consumers being encouraged to access the web on their mobile phones.

Increased smartphone penetration in Singapore will result in more users possessing the technology to view the richer content that is available on their mobile phones. The mobile medium will become increasingly useful to marketers. It’ll be exciting to see how YourSingapore turns into m-Singapore.

Rohit Dadwal, Managing Director, Mobile Marketing Association Asia Pacific Limited