Posts Tagged ‘mobile+research’

If we had to describe our role in the mobile industry, or even the mobile industry as a whole, in one word, it would be communication. Communication is the main artery that feeds businesses, governments, families, and friends. The mobile industry has always been about communication - starting from a “cellular car phone”, this mammoth box you’d take with you, or even have permanently installed in your car (actually seems ridiculous now), and now we’re looking at services and devices providing near real-time communication across many dimensions such as voice, SMS/text, video and location. If you step back, its actually amazing how easy it is to make contact.

Communicating Is A Personal Preference

People choose to communicate at the level they feel most comfortable with.  There are people that want to shout to the world their every move (e.g. Twitter),  people that take 3 days to respond to an email, and everywhere in between.  Mobile devices add a great layer of additional abilities, and more importantly added control.  A mobile device allows users to pick and choose where and when they provide information.  You can text your friends silently in a movie, post to your blog when you’re on a train, or ‘check in’ to a service like Google’s Dodgeball to see who’s around.

Mobile Communication as a Privacy Concern

As the industry evolves, there are many important ways to identify mobile users which become valuable information to marketers and providers alike.  Identifiable information such as unique device ID’s or mobile numbers paired with habits on the mobile web allows for highly targeted recommendations.  Additional information such as location based services can further target users and tailor unique marketing pitches based on information at hand.  Why wouldn’t you want to know whats around you if it poses an advantage (e.g. search ‘i need a bathroom’ on the mobile web and your closest options come up). From a personal perspective, as long as the choice of privacy remains, I would love to have this ability.

How the Fresh Mobile Team Communicates

While we are all in the same, relatively small office, we have established some great methods of communicating internally without the disruption of talking over each other. As designers and developers, we have a strong appreciation for that state where you are so involved in your work that time and space stand still (we call it “flow”), and everything you do is just spot-on! We respect each others flow, and base the methods of communication around that.

We start our day with a quick meeting covering what got done yesterday and what’s being worked on today. Usually our days consist of several tasks, so we developed an internal “Fritter” (Fresh + Twitter = Fritter) to passively let each other know what we’re doing. Fritter also updates itself with important events across all of our clients, such as a ticket submission or code deployment. Additionally, we have developed a robust Ticket system to complement our Fresh Platform, which gives our clients direct, organized communication to the Fresh team without causing interruption - and as a mobile company, natually we have developed an iPhone version of our Ticket system to make handling a breeze when we’re not at our desk.

Finally, for the full mobile tie in… we have a tremendous amount of monitoring feedback being relayed by the Fresh Platform to Email and SMS depending on severity - all which helps us monitor core system functionality and respond to major issues with urgency.

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With the proliferation of teen focused mobile sites from the major social networks like Facebook and MySpace, and the focus on mobile search from Google and Yahoo!, mobile users are increasingly becoming more comfortable accessing and reliably using their mobile device for off-deck uses. As the available WAP resources on the mobile Internet continue to grow, along with the focus of the manufacturers to deliver devices with better browsing capabilities, this market has and will surely continue to see double digit growth.

For teenagers (13-18), this represents an opportunity for freedom from their PC or TV. While this concept may be obvious, the results remain undeniable.  Teenagers are in one form or another on their mobile device all day, whether it be SMS and picture mail, checking their mobile version of their MySpace page, or other, they have become very familiar with the usage and navigation of the mobile Internet, despite the challenges imposed by carriers and manufacturers.

The teenage mobile market is already reported to be “saturated” by a report from MultiMedia Intelligence entitled “The Maturing Wireless Teen Market: 12-17 US Teen Wireless Subscribers, Revenue, ARPU and Content”.  In this report, the research identifies teens as extremely active in the mobile space; using more features and services, as well as teaching their older counter parts (e.g. parents) how to use their mobile device for value-added services, a great benefit to the industry as a whole.  The report identifies more than half of teens are subscribers by the age of 13, and by 17 most are.  Finally, the report found that girls reach “cellular maturity” sooner than boys, and among handset usage in teens of all ages, the numbers tend to skew more toward girls.

For the “Urban-ite”, this may represent their ONLY online experience. The mobile industry has seen this phenomenon outside the US, where mobile devices access the Internet more than any other device due to reasons such as cost, space, and connectivity. That is not to say this demographic isn’t highly sought after, especially in the major US cities.

From the perspective of the Fresh Mobile Platform, this gives us a great opportunity to deploy successful mobile initiatives on behalf of our clients. In addition to the traditional mobile storefronts, delivering rich mobile experiences can surely place your mobile destination in a fast-growing environment, targeting users in a new way - without the limitation of sitting at a computer or in front of their TV.  To learn more about how we’ve worked with clients targeting this very demographic, please contact us.