Do Yourself a Favor and Buy a Smartphone

Some 39 million Americans are already checking account information their bank accounts through their cell phones, according to Consumer Reports. In many cases, some of the simple queries conducted only require a feature phone. But if you want the latest and greatest applications that the financial institutions are offering, you need to buy a smartphone. With a smartphone, you will be able to take advantage of the awesome features like mobile check deposit, transferring funds, and making payments. If you stick with your current feature phone, you will miss out on the convenience and time saving benefits. Don’t let the use of feature phone frustrate you, a smartphone will make your banking needs a lot easier.

Women are Driving the Smartphone Market

Who is driving smartphone sales, men or women? Well, interestingly enough women in the 16 to 24 age group are currently helping smartphone sales forge ahead in the US. No surprise this, as a study has brought to light the phone-buying potential of the so called ‘wannabes’. And, they are a force indeed!

Latest research by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech US has found that women account for 54 percent of the smartphone buyers, and a cool 24 percent of them are typically young ones. The research has also found that a higher proportion of ‘wannabes’ are also students – accounting for 15% – as compared with 8% of current smartphone buyers.
So, that means a new generation of tech-aspiring Americans holds the key to the smartphones market. They could even push up sales of the smart handsets in the whole of US.

What can be seen as an interesting observation is that men under 34 years of age – who may be considered the early adopters – are now not a priority for smartphone makers whatsoever. This group of customers currently account for just 17 percent of smart phone purchases, as against the 28 percent during early 2010. It is being seen that smartphone providers are forced to look beyond these early adopters and focus more on new audiences in a scenario where competition among companies is buoyant. For instance, Apple and BlackBerry have been dominant forces till recently and they continue in that vein even now.

However, brands of the likes of HTC and Samsung have accelerated ahead in the smartphone terrain. A look at the statistics will make it clear that while HTC grew their market share from 12 percent to 19 percent, Samsung saw their share rise from 4 percent to 16 percent since the beginning of 2010. There isn’t any doubt that the smartphone market is vibrant and skyrocketing. The research has also found that 26% of consumers in the US are smartphone owners. Companies across the board have also sold a staggering 8.5 million devices during the latest quarter.

The ‘wannabes’ are the ones the phone makers now want to target, with most of the aspiring women and students not currently owning a smartphone but are looking forward to flaunt one.

Mobile Banking is a Must Have

Mobile banking innovation continues to move forward as the need for mobile based applications becomes a “must have” for businesses. Whether it is basic banking functionality, such as checking an account balance, or the ability to deposit a check via remote capture, mobile banking apps are enhancing the customer’s everyday banking experience.

A recent Barlow Research report noted that 43 percent of middle market companies and 45 percent of small businesses are interested in mobile banking. Barlow noted, “interest in mobile jumped considerably over the past year in the middle market segment (up 10 percent from 33 percent).”

Companies including Wells Fargo, Fiserv and Intuit, among others, are all standing behind mobile banking as a valuable channel for reaching customers. Barlow Research spoke with Nadilee Russell, SVP Business Solutions at Intuit Financial Services who said, “Business people, regardless of company size, are constantly on the go so they want tools to help them manage time-sensitive cash, payment and fraud prevention decisions from wherever they are, whenever…Staying connected is a key reason the mobile channel shows tremendous growth potential and may surpass online as the primary way some customers interact with their bank.”

Who uses a Smartphone?

Our last blog post spoke of smartphone projections from The Nielson Company on smartphones. Specifically, Nielson explained that they believed that the smartphone market would over take the feature phone market by the end of 2011. Nielson also provided a lot of other very interesting information.

Here are some of the interesting data points:
– Fourteen percent of feature phone users only use their phone for voice communications, compared to 3% of smartphone users.
– Five percent of feature phone users have Wi-Fi, compared to 50% of smartphone users.
– Slightly more males (53%) than females (47%) use smartphones.
– Two-thirds of smartphone users are personal users and one-third are business users.
– Hispanic Americans and Asians are slightly more likely to have a smartphone than what their share of population would indicate, which is a trend Nielsen observes in the adoption of other mobile data services.

Smartphone penetration

Smartphone penetration of the US mobile phone market will overtake feature phone penetration by the end of 2011, according to projections from The Nielsen Company.

Although only 21% of American wireless subscribers were using a smartphone as of Q4 2009 compared to 19% in Q3 2009 and 14% at the end of 2008, Nielsen expects smartphones to account for more than half of the US mobile phone market by 2011. Nielsen predicts smartphones will account for 24% of the US mobile phone market in Q1 2010 and rise to about 33% market share by Q4 2010.

Growth will then accelerate in 2011, hitting 40% in Q1 2011 and about 50% by Q3 2011. Based on this rapid increase, smartphones should pass the 50% mark during Q4 2011.

30 Million Americans Use Mobile To Access Financial Needs

In the fourth quarter of 2010, 29.8 million Americans accessed financial services accounts — including bank, credit card, or brokerage — via their mobile device, according to new state-of-the-industry research from comScore. This finding represented a 54% increase year-over-year, the state of the mobile financial services market is good.

“More people are turning to the convenience of mobile devices for their financial-service needs, fueled in part by the adoption of smartphones, 3G devices and unlimited data plans,” said Sarah Lenart, comScore vice president. “The ubiquitous nature of mobile devices affords financial brands an important channel to reach and engage customers, whether it’s at home, work or on-the-go.”

In total, 29.8 million Americans accessed financial-service accounts via their mobile device — browser or application – during the fourth quarter of the year. 18.6 million users accessed their financial accounts via mobile browser during the same period — up 58% from the previous year — while 10.8 million accessed their accounts via applications — up 120%. Text message represented the smallest access point for financial service audiences with 8.1 million users — up 35%.

“As brands compete for customer loyalty in this competitive market, marketers will need to focus on continually improving the mobile customer experience,” Lenart added.
Among mobile banking and credit card users, nearly half preferred going online via a fixed device as the primary way to access their accounts, with 47% of mobile banking customers and 44% of mobile credit card users doing so.

Mobile has become an increasingly important access channel — with 36% of mobile credit card users and 26% of mobile banking customers indicating it is their primary method of accessing their accounts. Only a small segment of these users listed speaking with a representative in person or on the phone as their primary access method, according to comScore.

Bigger = Better for Smartphone Screens

When it comes to smartphone screens, bigger is better from consumers’ standpoint, a new study finds. Mobile users are willing to give up extra room in their pockets and handbags for a better media experience on their handsets, according to market research firm NPD Group.

The U.S. market share for iPhones and other smartphones with screen sizes between 3.5 inches and 3.9 inches has remained steady, but smartphones with the largest screens (4 inches or larger) have grabbed share from devices with screens less than 3.5 inches.

Smartphones with 4-inch or larger screens, such as Samsung’s Galaxy S, HTC’s EVO 4G and Motorola’s Droid X, debuting in the second quarter of 2010 – like grew rapidly to account for 24% of the market by year’s end. By comparison, the share of smartphones with screen sizes between 3.5 inches and 3.9 inches increased just 2% from the fourth quarter of 2009. For phones with screens under 3.5 inches, market share contracted to 36% of the smartphone market in the fourth quarter of 2010 from 63% in the year-earlier period.

Demand for bigger screens isn’t just a guy thing, either. Men still make up the largest share of larger-screen smartphone buyers, but women are catching up-accounting for 40% of sales at the end of 2010, up from 30% at mid-year. NPD’s findings are based on data collected from mobile phone owners ages 18 and over.

Banks Want Mobile Deposit

When it comes to mobile banking, a bank can deploy a relatively simple downloadable app and satisfy customer needs at the same time. Which is probably why two of the top three functions banks are asking California-based mobile banking and payment provider mFoundry are as fundamental as the ability to check account balances and move money.

So what three mobile app features are hottest among banks right now? According to Drew Sievers, CEO and cofounder of mFoundry they are:

– Account management
– Mobile remote deposit capture
– Account transfers or bill pay

It makes sense. Until someone figures out how to dispense cash from a mobile phone, those three things will take care of the big stuff.

Smartphone Adoption Predictions Are Accurate

Smartphones have certainly changed the way we view and use mobile devices whether it is for personal or business use or both and with every new version, there seems no end to the consumer appetite for them. Technology is becoming better, prices are more competitive, graphics are fantastic but are smartphones actually being adopted at predicted rates?

Consider for a moment that apart from the Blackberry which has been the stalwart of the enterprise market for some years, smartphones in general are a relatively new product for most of us. Google only acquired Android 6 years ago and Apple only unveiled iPhone in 2007. It was probably less easy to predict the meteoric rise that smartphones would enjoy by 2011 back then. Late 2009 and most writers were predicting smartphone sales would continue to boom in 2010 but that was hardly rocket science. After all, Apple, who sold 5 million iPhone units in its first year had by early 2010 sold 51 million, so that was a pretty good indicator that things in the smartphone market were going well!

2009 was much more exciting for smartphone sales with a meteoric rise; with one research group telling us that 19% of US mobile consumers used a smartphone device but 49% planned to purchase by 2011. (Neilsen research is still predicting that 1 in 2 or 50% of consumers will own a smartphone by the end of this year so that forecast remains constant based on current sales figures). From 2009 to 2010, iPhone’s share of smartphone sales doubled which was better than expected.

It would seem that predictions are fairly accurate and that smartphones are currently being adopted at predicted rates. Nielsen research tells us that 1 in 2 consumers will have a smartphone by the end of 2011. With mobile commerce and mobile banking uptake also on the rise, this too would have a huge impact on sales.

Good News for You!

The global ASP for smartphones is expected to drop by about 10% from US$280-290 in 2010 to US$250-260 in 2011, according to Taiwan-based handset ODMs.

The 10% decrease is lower than the originally projected 15-20% mainly because of growing demand for expensive high-end smartphones, such as models equipped with dual-core processors or LTE, as well as increasing material and component costs, the sources pointed out.

However, the proportion of total sales volume for entry-level smartphones sold below US$200 will rise from less than 20% in 2010 to 30% in 2011 and may reach 50% in 2013, the sources indicated.