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U.S. Mobile Phone Sales Hit $8.8 Billion; Motorola #1

People are buying lots and lots of mobile phones—143 million units last year to be exact, per the NPD Group, Port Washington, N.Y. This accounted for $8.8 billion in sales. Motorola was the best-selling manufacturer gobbling up a third of sales followed by LG (16%), Nokia (15%) and Samsung (15%). Cingular/AT&T and Verizon each had 27% of all subscribers. Consumers started buying more bells and whistles as the year went on. For example, almost a third (32%) of all phones sold in the fourth quarter were music-enabled compared to 18% during the second quarter. Two-thirds of all devices in the fourth quarter had a camera and almost half (49%) had Bluetooth. 

Cracking Down on Short Code Programs

To make sure marketers aren’t harassing wireless subscribers, CTIA-The Wireless Association this week launched the “Common Short Code Auditing and Monitoring Initiative.” The idea is to protect consumers by keeping an eye on the 2,000 short code programs in place. Mobile research company Telephia has been tapped to monitor the programs to insure that they comply with the industry’s consumer best practices which include advertising clarity.

Advertising Targeted by Weather Conditions

Another snowy day…Hey wait. What’s this? An ad for Goodyear tires on my cell phone? I could really use them. This is the scenario that Weather Channel Mobile has now made a reality. Advertisers can now reach consumers via weather-triggered content on the mobile Web. The creation of “geo-targeted advertising” was among the many announcements at the CTIA Wireless conference (more to come).

Your Ad Here: Yahoo! to Sell Ads on MobiTV

MobiTV, which offers live programming like C-Span, Fox Sports and other premium content for mobile devices, has tapped Yahoo! and its new Yahoo! Mobile Publisher Services to sell ads on its platform. The partnership will provide “top brands access to a one-stop, fully integrated mobile media-buy across all advertising modes, including text, banner and mobile video,” per a statement issued yesterday at the CTIA Wireless conference in Orlando.

Google Tops in Mobile Site Traffic

For all those trying to figure out where to place your mobile banner ads, M:Metrics released its first ranking of mobile Web site traffic. Last month the top sites visited on mobile phones were:
1. Google
2. Yahoo!
3. MSN
4. Live.com
5. Go.com

For more information check out this article.

Study: Bribe Them to Watch Cellphone ads

Numerous studies have shown that consumers are turned off by the idea of viewing ads on their cellphones, but a new Harris Interactive poll provides a solution. Of the 1,000 people polled online last month, a little more than a third (35%) said they were willing to accpet incentive-based advertisements. Not surprisingly, the best bait was cash according to 78% of respondents, 63% wanted free minutes, 40% wanted coupons and another 40% wanted ringtones and mobile games. To view the reports top line results, click here.

James Bond Attacks the Third Screen

Finally had the chance to see Casino Royale. The new Bond was pretty good, maybe a little too serious for my taste, but the co-star was excellent. Not Bond girl Eva Green. No, the other co-star—Sony. Sony Vaio stole one scene while 007’s Sony Ericcson phone was prominently featured in at least two. One of which, showed Daniel Craig watching some sort of faux high-tech grid on his phone. It made me laugh because the way cell phone technology is advancing, the scene-chewing cell phone footage is going to soon look archaic. I don’t know if anyone else remembers Diamonds are Forever with Sean Connery when all of the top secret information he stole was stored on a new piece of cutting edge technology. What was this fancy technology? It was a cassette tape. Seems kind of hilarious today.

Marketing on Cellphones on the Cheap

Not sure how well this service will work, but it sounds compelling. Teleflip’s Flipmail "e-mail to cellphone service" will beta launch on April 15. They will offer to anyone who has a cellphone the ability to have their e-mails sent to their cellphone without any special handset, without Internet connectivity and without any downloadable applications. Why is this relevant to brand marketers? “Now they don't have to pay mobile marketing companies ($10,000 to $20,000 a mobile program) to push out their marketing messages into the mobile space,” said Donna Amato, dir.-consumer and corporate communications for TeleFlip Inc. “The consumer registers one-time only to ‘flip’ their phone and voila they’re receiving the brand owners’ e-mails on their cellphone. The brand owner can now take mobile out of their marketing program and just extend their online email marketing program by simply getting their customer to ‘flip’ their phone.” She said that as a former dir.-mobile marketing at Warner Bros., “I completely understand the frustration of achieving and ROI with a costly mobile marketing program.”

iM Not Buying the iPhone

If the new Apple iPhone is anything like the last two iPods I’ve owned it will work like this:

1. After less than a year the battery won’t hold a charge any longer and I will be forced to buy another iPhone because Apple is apparently in the disposable electronics device business.
2. When playing a Texas Hold 'Em video game on my new, more expensive iPhone, the screen will freeze at pivotal moments rendering the entire device useless until the battery finally dies.
3. Soon the iPhone will not allow me turn it out off, forcing me again to let the battery die when it is not in use. This is a constant pain because it will need to be recharged constantly.
4. Upon returning the iPhone to RadioShack they will alert me to the fact that I’m two days passed the store warranty window and that they cannot replace the device—it has to be sent away instead.
5. After week one, I find that RadioShack doesn’t know how to fix it and that it will be sent to Apple.
6. After nearly three weeks of waiting, the RadioShack clerks will still have no idea where my iPhone is and I will swear off Apple forever.

Making Waves in Mobile Content

Mywaves is offering brands the chance to pass-a-long video clips from Web sites to mobile devices for free. SND2MBL works much like “e-mail a friend.” The company will provide a short bit of HTML code, available at mywaves.com, that can be placed next to short videos. The code will allow videos to be sent to desired phone numbers. Companies are invited to try it for free or opt for the premium version that includes audience measurement and reporting. Mywaves is considering having recipients watch a 3-5 second ad before the free content or having brands pay for each view of their video. Mywaves is a free mobile video service featuring 25,000 channels. It’s registered 250,000 users since its mid-December launch. “We’re the first carrier and handset independent mobile video display service that works in close to 100 companies with a rapidly growing user base that is highly targetable,” said Mywaves CEO Rajeev Raman. For more on mywaves and companies like them, check out this Adweek article.