Local Search, Social Networking and Mobile Gaming Increasingly Popular
The latest “Smartphone Intelligence” survey from Compete shows that local search, social networking and mobile gaming are all prominent activities on smart phones. While social networking activities are still mostly PC-based, there is a significant number of users who participate via both their smart phones and computers.
The survey from the first quarter of 2010 found that nearly a third of smart phone owners has called or walked into a local business upon finding it via a local search app. The implications for owners are obvious: there’s a big opportunity here, but you have to be working to be ready to take advantage.
“With the increasing popularity of local search, retailers should ensure their sites are optimized for mobile browsers,” said Danielle Nohe, director of technology and entertainment for Compete. “Making it easy for consumers to discover businesses via their devices opens local companies up to a whole new customer demographic, and savvy businesses should make sure they’re maximizing this opportunity.”
According to the survey, 33 percent of smart phone Twitter users tweet primarily through their smart phones, while 33 percent of this group prefers to read tweets on their mobile phones.
For respondents who access Facebook on both their computers and smart phones, 52 percent said they split time between their smart phones and computers when it comes to reading news feeds, while 27 percent said they do this mostly on their computers and 14 percent said they mostly do this on their smart phone.
When it comes to posting status updates, 46 percent said their usage was split evenly between their smart phones and computers, while 30 percent said they do this primarily on their computers and 14 percent said they do this mostly on their smart phones.
Forty-six percent of respondents to the survey said they reply to friends’ status updates via both their smart phones and computers evenly, while 36 percent said they do this mostly on their computers and 12 percent said they do this primarily through their smart phones.
Of those who post photos on Facebook, 28 percent said this activity was split evenly between their smart phones and computers, while 47 percent said they do this mostly on their computers and 16 percent said they do this mostly on their smart phones.
For reading and replying to private messages on Facebook, 14 percent said they do this evenly on their smart phones and computers, while 37 percent said they do this mostly on their computers and 14 percent said they do this mostly on their smart phones.
Sending friend invitations, chatting via Facebook IM with friends, creating and sending invites to events and becoming a fan of companies/brands were all activities that were primarily done through computers, according to Compete.
“Based on our findings, I recommend marketers start thinking about new ways to maximize consumers’ use of smartphones on social sites, as mobile adoption will likely only increase with time,” said Nohe in a press release.
The survey also found that 51 percent of iPhone users have five or more games on their phones, which is a stark contrast to the 46 percent of BlackBerry users who have no games on their devices.
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