The world surely loves its mobile phones. Every latest OS release & handset launch by different manufacturers is rabidly covered in reams of newsprint & takes over the cyberworld, where it becomes difficult to distinguish where news coverage stops and fanboy drooling begins. Beyond the glitzy launches and hyperbole surrounding new technology & newer features that promise to transform your life, lies the simple truth that no one wants to acknowledge: It’s about the money, honey. Fact is, it’s always been about money. Let’s look at the Gang of Four that rules the Internet: Apple, Google, Facebook, and Amazon. You’ve seen the curated ecosystem that has catapulted Apple to the top of the heap, and deservedly so. In a way, Apple is responsible for the current boom in smartphones. On the other hand, you have Google’s Android, which now is touching 1 million activations per day, and yet Google continues to make very little money out of it. Meanwhile Amazon has had a runaway blockbuster in Kindle, which began life as an e-reader, then became an experience, as it became available on the desktops & mobiles as an app, and then became a bonafide tablet. And did you know, it’s a self-publishing platform too? And lastly, there’s Facebook. Not even looking at its controversial IPO, the mobile gods do not seem to have smiled upon Facebook that much as it struggles to find a secret sauce for success on mobile. Have you noticed I haven’t even mentioned Windows phone yet? I’m still sitting on the fence on that one. The point I’m making here is that there is a world of difference between what companies will have you believe is the manna from heaven, and what really sells in the market. Take for example, NFC. NFC is loved by geeks, and will surely revolutionize mobile payments….in the year 2025. Right now, we have barely 4 phones in the market that have NFC chips in them, and probably even lesser NFC enabled terminals out there. Don’t forget, we do have a very good payments system: Plastic cards. This system took nearly 20 years to become mainstream. NFC isn’t going to sweep all this away in just 2 years. NFC is there for the long haul, and will eventually become the defacto standard, but it will take time. Look at the number of apps out there. We’re approaching 1 million apps in the respective app stores. Making sense of this overload madness requires another app perhaps.

1. Minority Report
Abhay Aggarwal

2. 2
Abhay
Hello I’m

3. 3
Where does the
mobile industry
stand today?

4. 4
6 BILLION
PHONES
worldwide
10 BILLION
by 2016

5. 5
Top 5 Phone Makers
417
329
94
88
66
Phonesshipped(2011)
Nokia Samsung Apple LG ZTE

6. 6
Top 3 Smartphone Makers

7. 7
How does 2012
look like?

8. 8
1.8 BILLION
phones
will be shipped
in
2012
38% of them
will be smart!

9. 9
Top 3 Markets
1 BILLION +
920MILLION
320 MILLION

10. 10
The Dragon & the Tiger
30%
of the world’s
connections
sold here

11. 11
Hype vs Reality

12. Shipment by Phone Makers
• Feature phones still outsell Smartphones 2
to 1
• Nokia & Samsung account for nearly 50%
of all sales
– Between them, they sold more than half a
billion feature phones
12

13. 13
Shipment by OS
I’m the King of
the world!

14. 14
Let’s talk
APPS

15. App Downloads
15
30 Billion
downloads
25 Billion
downloads

16. Game On!...or not
16

17. Disruptive Innovation
• Desktop is no longer the only doorway to Internet
• In many countries (including India), Mobile is the
only/primary screen for Internet access
• Mobile Technology is no longer a fad, its a movement
• Mobile users are not second class citizens!
17

18. Where do we go from here?
18

19. Mobile Optimization
• Mobile experience is sub-optimal
• Non-optimized sites, loads of content, limited features
• 3/4th of users will wait upto 5 seconds for a page to load
before abandoning the site (A third of those won’t return
back)
• Speed is crucial: Over 2/3rd of users expect a mobile page to
load as fast as a webpage on the desktop
19

20. Mobile Search
• Mobile searches have increased 4X in the past year
• 1 in 3 mobile searches are local – Localize!
• Mentioning a location in mobile ads and search results can
increase click-thru rates 200%
20

21. Mobile Search
Percentage of searches that are via mobile:
– Restaurant – 30%
– Automotive – 17%
– Consumer Electronics – 15%
– Finance/Insurance – 15%
– Beauty & Personal – 15%
21

22. Mobile Commerce
• Tablet owners more likely to purchase than smartphone
users
• Merchandise purchase popular in developed markets. M-
payments include money transfers & prepaid topups in
developing markets.
22
$7 Billion worth of transactions….each!

23. Mobile Social
• 91% of mobile internet access is for social activities
• 1/3rd of Facebook users, and 50% of Twitter users use
mobile
• QR code scans increased 300% year on year
• 21% of Pinterest users purchased a product after seeing a
picture on Pinterest
23

24. Mobile Email Marketing
• The entertainment, finance, publishing, and social
networking industries see above average mobile email
views compared to other industries.
• In 2011, mobile email opens increased 34%, while webmail
and PC opens decreased by 11% and 9.5%, respectively.
• Mobile email readership is at its peak on Saturday, and at
its lowest on Monday
24

25. Show me the money
25

26. Growth Sectors
26
Mobile Finance Education Travel
Healthcare User Research

27. Mobile Finance
• SMS is still the most preferred way for payments in
developing countries
• 50% of all mobile sales in India are CoD
• Digital goods is the largest segment accounting for 40% the
market
• NFC is still too far away – requires too many parties to
agree to do something together
27

28. Mobile & Education
• Quality education (including dissemination) is always an
issue
• Mobile devices are reshaping the way students learn &
interact with each other and their teachers
• Making content accessible, increasing engagement,
providing assignments & sharing feedback are the new
challenges
28

29. Mobile & Travel
• Travel is the biggest industry on earth, with $2 Trillion in
revenues
• Includes both local & social interaction
• Booking a ticket is easy. Searching for destinations, not so
much.
• New tech processes needed to improve the “travel arc” –
dreaming about where to go, booking the trip, , taking the
actual trip, and finally back home
29

30. Mobile & Healthcare
• Desktop searches: cancer, weight loss, sleep
• Mobile searches: sexual or mental health, addiction
• Society’s unmentionables can be addressed better via
mobile
• Improved access to care, patient-doctor engagement,
collating historical data, storing insurance records, reducing
medicare fraud are growth areas
30

31. Mobile & User Research
• Short surveys are effective surveys. More so with mobile…
• Convenience – Mobile surveys can be answered anywhere,
anytime
• Straightforward – The middleman is eliminated as
information is captured directly from the participant in a
natural setting
• Fast – Wait period is reduced as data capture is
instantaneous
• Personal – Information can be captured from device, as
well as geolocation data
31

32. There’s more…
• The future of media is mobile
• People will pay a premium for convenience
32

33. The India Story
33

34. 34

35. In Summary
35

36. • Looking beyond OS platforms is important – Feature phones
still outsell smartphones by a factor of 2 to 1
• Stake your presence on one platform (to begin with), and then
branch out onto other platforms
• Mobile web is becoming more important than apps, so having
a mobile presence or strategy is imperative
• Healthcare, Travel, User Research, Education, Finance sectors
will see huge growth in mobile adoption
36

37. One last thing…
37

38. 38

39. 39
Directing a film is like trying to write War &
Peace in a bumper car at an amusement
park.
Stanley Kubrick

40. 40
</thanks>

41. 41
References
Mobile Stats
• http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats
• http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23523812
• http://mobithinking.com/blog/2011-handset-and-smartphone-sales-big-picture
App Store Stats
• http://www.valuewalk.com/2012/08/apple-inc-aapl-app-store-faces-rising-
competition-from-google-play/
• http://thegamebakers.com/money-and-the-app-store-a-few-figures-that-might-help-
an-indie-developer.html
India Mobile Stats
• http://emerge.nasscom.in/2012/05/the-great-e-commerce-puzzle-do-the-pieces-
finally-fit/
• http://www.pluggd.in/mobile-internet-activity-in-india-is-more-than-us-297/
Flickr Images