Mobile Market View Survey: More Mobile, More Local

BIA/Kelsey’s Mobile Market View survey releases today, showing a big rise in smartphone use as well as corresponding mobile Web activity and data consumption.

The annual U.S. consumer survey, currently in Wave III, indicates a surprisingly high jump in smartphone use to nearly a third of adult mobile subscribers (I’ll address in a separate post). Supporting this, many forms of user engagement increased, as smartphone ownership correlates to higher data consumption

Specifically, the data reveal a growing class of “heavy users” of non-voice modalities. The percentage of users making more than 10 mobile Internet accesses per week increased significantly, now representing more than one-fifth of all mobile users. Drilling down, among mobile users:

• 48.2 percent sent or received more than 10 text messages per week
• 21 percent had more than 10 Internet accesses per week
• 20 percent sent or received more than 10 e-mails per week

As for the local angle, we saw growth in the percentage of respondents who are using mobile devices to search for products or services locally. Among mobile users:

• 18.5 percent searched the Internet for local products or services (up from 15.6 percent last year)
• 11.1 percent searched the Internet for products or services outside their local area (down from 14.3 percent)
• 15.9 percent obtained information about movies or other entertainment
• 13.3 percent obtained information about restaurants or bars
• 4 percent purchased a physical item that needed to be shipped (e.g., a book)
• 3 percent used a coupon from their mobile phone

Subscribers of BIA/Kelsey’s Mobile Local Media program can log in and access the full report. We’ll also continue to report on many of the findings, including user interest in local coupons and promotions. And we’ll present and dive into all the data at the Interactive Local Media conference next month. We hope to see you there.