When it comes to market research, I am usually much more negative than postitive, but this is the first of two posts where I am going to turn around my attitude completely. Today’s example is good, but the one I will write on next is even better. Maybe I’m just getting too much into the Christmas spirit?
Tnooz have not yet put up their 2011 predictions (should be any day now), but the second of the two predictions that I gave them was Mobile apps and airport kiosks begin their decline.
With that in mind, take a look at the market research data below I just saw.
A big theme I will be talking about frequently in 2011 is how a pure mobile strategy really sounds “so 2009″ and the way forward for airlines is to think of a mobile enabled direct channel strategy – it may sound similar, but they really are quite different. The native apps / mobile web discussion is one of the central planks of that theme.
Whilst on the topic of market research, the data I am going to put up in the next post comes from the best research report I have seen in a long time, but I’m still missing something that maybe one of my readers has access to. Has anyone seen good research showing time spent on Facebook segmented by age? The closest I have seen is a Morpace report on Facebook usage by age and ethnicity but I’d be much more comfortable if rather than just asking people, the data came from Nielsen, Comscore. Hitwise or some type of panel data where actual rather than stated usage was measured. If you have a report like this, I can be contacted via this page, so please don’t be shy. The report I will be referencing in my next post was sent to me by a regular reader of this blog (thanks Mario), and also today when you click on a link you should notice it opening in a new tab – another change based on reader feedback (thanks Andrew).
To hear more about the Adobe study on mobile, and to find out more about the chart I have used above, you can listen to webcast here.
December 23, 2010 at 7:19 pm
Martin,
I took a look at the Adobe research and don’t quite trust it all the way. At best it says that there’s no (statistically significant) preference between mobile web and apps. But I’m not sure that I buy that. It doesn’t pass the smell test for me. Further, when you look at the activities you also have to consider whether there’s alternatives in each category (in general, but also by category. If people are on BB, they have very few app choices, so “preference” is for mobile web).
Since Flash isn’t usable to build apps for most platforms…and certainly not on iOS, I worry about intentional bias in the way the questions are asked to illicit a desired result. If they didn’t do that, I’d be surprised.
December 24, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Glenn, I’m the first one to be suss about any market research that asks people their opinion over actually monitoring their online behavior, but I thought this one was better than most. I’m predicting that 2011 will see mobile web in travel getting more attention that the apps which were the really hot topic in 2010, especially for people traveling within a region where roaming charges are not an issue. I know a lot of people do not agree with me on this point, and this is one reason I liked the research as the chart I posted was something I honestly was not expecting to see in a market research report.