Mobilizing, Part II
[Posted by David Card]
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If you’re a marketer or a media company thinking about mobile audiences, here’s a little perspective. (See this report.) While there will be plenty of on-the-go laptops with broadband access in the US, they’ll be dwarfed by the number of 3G mobile phones. Broadband phones will reach critical mass — 15% to 20% of the population, 40 to 50 million users — if not mass-market reach, by 2010.
That means marketers should remain experimental, focusing campaigns on
mobile experiences that are small-screen and SMS-like and that take
advantage of local and social information. 3G coverage will vary by carrier, and by region, so you’ll get reach in major metro areas first. And of course, the demos will skew a little young, but you knew that. Learn from SMS more than from the Web, and don’t forget what worked back in the bad old days of dial-up walled gardens.