A new report from eMarketer confirms what we already knew: That the smartphone is becoming much more than a means for mobile calls—and more and more consumers are ditching the basic mobile phone for a smart device.
What’s interesting about this new survey is how smartphone users are spending their time on their devices.
While the greatest proportion of UK users surveyed by eMarketer said they made calls with their smartphones (83 percent), that was only the fourth most popular activity for those devices.
On any given day, smartphone users in that country:
- Spend 24 minutes browsing the Internet
- Spend 16 minutes checking social networks
- Spend 13 minutes playing games
- Spend seven minutes watching TV
By 2017, predicts eMarketer, nearly 66 percent of the total population in the UK will use smartphones, providing a rich market for brands with a responsive mobile strategy. The smartphone is considered by many to be the “perfect catch-all device.” A survey by 02 and Samsung reveals that 25 percent of those who own smartphones use them in place of their laptop.
While in 2012, only 17% of weekly mobile phone activities accounted for shopping, the number of customers who expect a seamless buying experience across channels continues to grow.
During a session at ICRE 2013, Norm Colbert, who focuses on mergers, acquisitions, capital markets and private placement transactions for Petsky Prunier, one of the leading investment banks that serves the Internet, marketing, media, technology, information, healthcare, and service, told his audience that companies making acquisitions are investing heavily in mobile.
“One of the first questions asked of any company now is, ‘What is your mobile strategy,’” he said. “There is a lot of money to be lost in mobile.”
A mobile strategy doesn’t simply consist of making your e-commerce website mobile friendly. Users of smartphones spend plenty of time gaming and checking social networks, making it critical that your mobile plans encompass and consider all the touchpoints at which a user can be engaged.
