Category Archives: SMS

New report says mobile use higher among older users than previously thought; yes, but…

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A new report from InsightExpress suggests that mobile penetration and use may be much higher than widely thought.

Key points:

  • …mobile penetration was high across all ages, at 85% and 82% for Gens Y and X, respectively–meanwhile, 80% of younger Boomers surveyed had a mobile phone, followed closely by older Boomers at 79%.
  • Boomers’ handsets were just as cutting edge as their younger counterparts, as 75% of younger Boomers and 68% of older Boomers had phones that supported text messaging–compared to 86% and 82% of Gens Y and X, respectively.
  • Gen Y led the pack in actual text-message usage with 43%, followed by Gen X with 22%–but some 16% of all younger Boomers and 10% of all older Boomers sent or received text messages daily. Continue reading →

Obama campaign launches mobile, screws it up

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I yarped for months that political campaigns weren’t launching mobile. There’s this massive youth generation that’s setting records for political and community activity, the mobile phone is one of their favorite things in the world, and all these politicians and their high-priced communications groups were doing … nada. I’ve talked to some of them, too.

  • “We’re working on it.”
  • “Yeah, thanks, I’ll pass your name on.”
  • “Sounds great – here’s a list of 30 people you might try.”
  • “Ummm, I have no idea who would be in charge of that.”

Well, finally this week the Obama campaign launched a mobile marketing campaign. Continue reading →

Text is king, and it’s going to stay that way for awhile

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Recently I was sort of explaining the business to a friend whose knowledge and perceptions about the mobility market were probably pretty common. Like a lot of people I’ve talked to, she sort of looked suspiciously at my suggestion that any effective marketing, advocacy or content play was going to need to be based in SMS (text messaging).

But what about Blackberries and all the phones that stream higher-order content, she wondered. She was under the fairly common misperception that penetration of these technologies is a lot greater than it actually is. For example, what do you think the penetration of WAP-addressable handsets is? Continue reading →