Taking Mobile Social On The Road; Location Apps

A primer on what’s happening in regards to consumers and social mobile applications and usage.

Nielsen is the leader when it comes to identifying and educating us on consumer trends. Here’s how they explain what’s happening in regards to mobile social.

“The way U.S. consumers spend their Internet time on their mobile phones paints a slightly different picture to that of Internet use from computers. In a Nielsen survey of mobile web users, there is a double-digit (28 percent) rise in the prevalence of social networking behavior, but the dominance of email activity on mobile devices continue with an increase from 37.4 percent to 41.6 percent of U.S. mobile Internet time.

Portals remain as the second heaviest activity on mobile Internet (11.6 percent share of time), despite their double digit decline and social networking’s rise to account for 10.5 percent share means the gap is much smaller than a year ago (14.3 percent vs. 8.3 percent).

Other mobile Internet activities seeing significant growth include music and video/movies, both seeing 20 percent plus increases in share of activity year over year. As these destinations gain share, it’s at the cost of other content consumption – both news/current events and sports destinations saw more than a 20 percent drop in share of U.S. mobile Internet time.“Although we see similar characteristics amongst PC and mobile internet use, the way their activity is allocated is still pretty contrasting, added Martin.”

In another Nielsen report, state of mobile apps released this summer ( June 2010). Nielsen reports that 21% of American wireless subscribers have a smart-phone as of Q4 2009 and that is an increase from 19% in the previous quarter and outpaces the 14% of wireless clients that had a smart phone at the end of 2008. 14% of mobile subscribers have downloaded an app in the last 30 days Average number of apps: Smart-phone: 22, Feature phone: 10, BlackBerry: 10, iPhone:3, Android: 22, Palm: 14, Windows Mobile: 13.

In addition;

• Games are the most downloaded apps – both free and paid
• Facebook, Google Maps and Weather Channel are the most popular apps across smart-phones
  • iPhones: Facebook (58%), iTunes (48%), Google Maps (47%)
  • Android: Google Maps (67%), Facebook (50%), Weather Channel (38%)
  • Blackberry: Facebook (51%), Google Maps(34%), Weather Channel (28%)

• Social Networking: Facebook clearly favorite app, but MySpace is hugely popular among teens; LinkedIn attracts adults 25-44
• News/weather: Weather Channel was used by 58%; age distribution across sites was similar, save for Time Mobile and Thomson Reuters
• Shopping: Amazon and eBay lead (57% and 41%)
• Search/Map: skew male, particularly Instamapper (80/20)
• Video/Movie: skewed towards males; Imeem and Moviefone show a higher proportion of young users
• Music: iTunes, Pandora, Sirius XM appeal more to males, while Yahoo Music almost evenly split (51/49).

Nielsen provides multiple cuts of mobile social data highlighted in the charts below.

Social mobile growth will be dependent on the quality of the user experience . Don’t miss this article outlining the specific reasons Mashable likes these 5 social mobile apps customer interfaces.

Now want to see what Mashable readers believe are the best social mobile applications? Check out these sites to further understand who the players are and what’s happening in mobile social, location apps.

And that’s it for this mobile social primer…

Top 10 Mashable Reader Mobile Social Apps

10. Twidroid

9. Gowalla

8. Flixster

7. UberTwitter

6. TweetDeck

5. Tweetie

4. Twitter mobile version

3. Hootsuite (iPhone)

2. Foursquare

1. Facebook

Pam Hoelzle