Mobile Market Research

In the three months between October and January, Android’s overall share of smartphone subscribers in the U.S. rose 4.3 points to 7.1 percent, according to mobile market share data released by comScore.  Android showed the biggest single gain of any of the top five smartphone platforms.  Apple’s share was virtually flat at 25.2 percent (up 0.3 percent), while RIM’s Blackberries saw a 1.7 percent gain to 43 percent.

See the original post:
Google Gains, Apple Stays Steady, And Palm Loses In Smartphone Share

I've been getting very close to most of the mobile platforms on the market today, and wanting to summarize my thoughts about their potential impact on mobile research. Seeing Samantha's February 25th post about smartphone market share, a brain-dump on the subject should dovetail nicely...

Looking back on key announcements over the past year, Google, Apple and more recently Microsoft have made the most significant splashes in terms of mobile innovation. However, when the dust settles we still see Nokia and Research in Motion (RIM) leading the charge with 47% and 20%, respectively, of the mobile OS market in 2009. Why is this the case, and what can we expect to see moving forward?

I believe the current mobile market is a race between 5 horses, but I will not count others out over the long term due to the still-early nature of this arena. The key players today are:

• Apple: since its release, the iPhone has set the bar for smartphone usability; its slightly thinner sibling, the iPod touch, is the definition of a sleek, modern Personal Digital Assistant (PDA); and the forthcoming iPad is one of the most anticipated products of all time. Simply put, Apple has a lot of swagger and momentum in the mobile space. But Apple runs a very closed environment that people either love or hate, and this creates opportunities for other more open platforms to shine. Also, while Apple has done very well in the consumer space, it has made fewer inroads into the enterprise, where RIM and Microsoft thrive.

• Research in Motion (RIM): the BlackBerry is one of the most impressive brands of our time. While RIM is often considered less marketing savvy than Apple, I would suggest that their marketing tactics have been every bit as effective as Apple's -- just different. Despite a barrage of criticism about the sexiness and usability of their products, RIM continues to grow and profit at an astounding rate. I personally questioned the usability of BlackBerry products compared to more elegant competitors like iPhone and Android, but I have come to appreciate them as solid, enterprise-worthy devices, and to see the company as a very savvy player in the mobile space. RIM has developed very deep roots with both wireless carriers and enterprise IT departments, as well as a powerful brand that is almost synonymous with thumb-typing on a mobile phone.

• Nokia: the Nokia/Symbian world is complicated. Having personally handled dozens of Nokia phones, I would summarize that their strength is in their diversity of offerings to multiple levels of the marketplace. This is also their weakness. With countless products, three current operating systems, and a solid-but-aging feel on much of their hardware, it is hard to believe that Nokia still outsells its nearest smartphone competitor at more than a 2-to-1 ratio. But while they are not as strong in North America, Nokia is a major player in Europe and downright dominant in many other regions of the world. It is hard to discount a company that produces over 1 million phones per day (yes, you read that correctly). With the incredible depth of carrier relationships and distribution channels which they have developed, Nokia's challenge now is to fill those channels with products that compete with their ever-growing range of competitors.

• Google: Google has garnered a lot of attention since announcing the open-source (and freely available) Android platform in 2007. By providing a smartphone operating system that is free and extensible, Android has garnered support from dozens of handset manufacturers including major players like Motorola and HTC. In contrast to Apple, Google's greatest strength (and weakness) is its openness. I am personally very impressed with most of the Android devices I have used, and as a consumer I have great optimism that Android will be a force to be reckoned with in mobile technology. But I also recognize that openness can lead to fragmentation, and I've heard a lot of grumbling from developers about the lack of standards on Android devices. As Microsoft learned when it allowed device manufacturers and wireless carriers to customize experiences based on its Windows Mobile platforms, I believe that the many emerging flavours of Android devices will make it difficult for developers to target. That said, I believe that Google's ability to integrate the mobile experience with all of their other web-based services will make it a formidable player in the mobile space, and I believe the fragmentation issue can be overcome as Google and other Android licensees learn to coexist.

• Windows Mobile: I recently spoke about the forthcoming Windows 7 Phone Series, so I won't repeat myself on the details. Suffice to say that I think Microsoft has re-entered the mobile race, and demonstrated that they are not planning to turn away from this increasingly important battlefield. Microsoft has learned a lot of lessons over more than a decade in mobile computing, and I believe their enterprise roots will serve them well as they re-assert themselves with a brand new mobile platform. What remains to be seen is whether Microsoft can garner enough consumer interest to unseat competitors in the mass market, or whether it will continue to play a more niche role as an enterprise solution.

I have not even mentioned the likes of Palm (webOS), Samsung (bada), Linux Mobile (LiMo), or expanded on the now open-source Symbian OS (the Nokia-bred OS that was recently spun off as a freely available platform). And there are others... but the rabbit hole is simply too deep to cover here, so I will get back to the purpose of my post: to discuss the impact of mobile platform trends on market research.

There are fundamentally two ways to engage people on their mobile devices in a data-intensive way: (1) via their web browser; and (2) using a downloadable application. 

• Mobile web browsers are improving in capability and usability, and are finally emerging as a lowest-common-denominator approach to mobile engagement. If you need to reach a lot of people in a relatively shallow way, e.g. to conduct a brief mobile survey about a product or experience, then a mobile browser may well be the way to go. Although mobile browsers are still fragmented, the emergence of mobile web technologies such as HTML 5, JavaScript, CSS and Adobe Flash are making it more viable to reach a wide mobile audience.

• Downloadable applications provide a richer user experience for applications such as diary studies and mobile panels, but they are typically harder to deploy to a broad range of users. Also dovetailing with Sean's recent post about quality over quantity, I would argue that in many cases a more select audience that is highly engaged is more valuable than a broad audience that is minimally engaged. It is these cases -- for example digital ethnography with alarms to trigger highly contextual questions at random times -- where mobile apps really shine.

Bear with me as I attempt to tie all of this information together...

The mobile jungle is in some ways becoming more wild every day, but I am also seeing signs that a handful of gorillas may be starting to establish some turf. While I don't believe that all five gorillas outlined here will win over the long term, each one represents sufficient market share and resources to be considered as key players for the foreseeable future. With that in mind, I think we will begin to see some stabilization of mobile platforms, resulting in more reliable ways to reach the masses via both web browsers and downloadable applications.

For the next while solutions focused on mobile research will have to choose between "wide and shallow" or "narrow and deep" -- i.e. either focus on reaching a broad range of people with a more basic level of engagement, or on providing a high level of engagement within a more narrow scope of users.  I don't feel that one is inherently better than the other, and both represent significant opportunities within the burgeoning mobile research space.

Over the long term the two paths that I have identified will converge. In the meantime, having invested a lot of time and energy developing methods to engage people in a deep and meaningful way, I am a big believer in the power of rich mobile applications. With over 3 Billion application downloads in less than 18 months, Apple has more than proven the viability of downloadable apps, and all other major platforms have since poured significant resources into their own mobile app stores.

Over the next while it is prudent to focus on the five key players I have identified here: Apple, RIM, Nokia, Google and Microsoft. But peripheral vision is often what sets the great apart from the good, so I allow my eyes to wander a bit in search of innovative smaller players that might just have a thing or two to teach the gorillas. 

A lot of our clients immediately jump to the concept of "reach" when they first begin to think about mobile research and wireless surveys. They worry that only a small percentage of their panel might be willing to take a survey on their phone, and they think that hard-to-reach groups (like teens) are the perfect audience for mobile research. 

Sure, using consumer engagement techniques that make your interactions more personal and portable should make them inherently more relevant, thereby increasing response and reducing churn.

But that's not what's really exciting about cellular surveys. My favourite conversation with clients is the one when the light goes on the realization sets in that mobile research is about so much more than putting traditional online surveys on a small screen.

What's really exciting is the new reality that as researchers we can take advantage of the billions of dollars that device manufacturers pour into R&D. Built-in functions such as taking photos and capturing GPS coordinates are just the beginning - even so, these basic capabilities provide us with some pretty astounding options for gaining insights from targeted mobile groups and communities!

So how many people do I need in my mobile panel? I by no means decry the important science of sampling, but check out this article that explores how big the ideal online research community should be, and hopefully you too will start to become a believer in quality over quantity.

We talk a lot about trying to get deeper insights by using new mobile research tools that are personal, portable and relevant. But maybe we're missing the boat. There's a lot of money to be made in being a professional respondent, right? 

"It's hard to keep up with all of those online polls on my busy schedule..."

Check this out for a fun view of our industry that brings the concept of "professional respondent" to a whole new level:

The rules of research are about to change in Spring 2010. The MRS (UK's professional association for researchers) will begin enforcement of a new ban on use of client goods or services as incentives in a research project.

So many corporate communities, especially branded panels, rely heavily on this very technique for survey conducting.

Who can deny the reason behind it? I remember answering a poll in a teen magazine (was that really decades ago?) where I purposefully skewed my answers to highlight my desire to see more of the content that they were providing in that very issue. I thought it would increase my chances of winning the cash prize! But in fact I couldn't have cared less about Menudo.

With DIY research making a stronger push than ever, how does this affect the position of the professional researcher who is already challenged when trying to coach clients about the "right" way of doing things?

Maybe the promise of mobile research where true engagement through 2-way communication occurs will emerge one technique that can gain answers without bribes. But we'll never escape it will we? Time is money, especially when it comes to hard-to-reach populations.

Maybe it's no big deal. Cash always been king when it comes to the incentive that works for everyone. But where does that leave financial research? :)

Mark Cameron, Co-founder and Owner of Techneos, is co-presenting with a number of other mobile research industry leaders at the Upcoming Trends, Do's and Don'ts for Mobile Research webinar hosted by Peanut Labs.

The free webinar is new Wednesday, December 16th from 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM PST. If you are interested, you can read more on the webinar and sign up here.

In my last post, I wondered about device market share and it's affect on our ability to reach the right people for survey conducting.

I focused on the manufacturer / operating system, but another element also has a significant affect on reach. I guess you could call it Mode. We normally talk about mode in terms of whether we're collecting data over the web, over the phone, face-to-face, etc. Mobile is it's own mode, but there are choices within that mode.  

Specifically, the primary mobile mode possibilities for a mobile survey system are text message, mobile web, and applications.

Check out this interview/podcast from a recent interview at a CASRO event. Heidi Dickert has some good points about how a different type of technology is required when looking at mobile surveys. The message? You can't just replicate the same old approach when it comes to mobile research.





Text messages give you ubiquitous reach, but the commonly held experience among those I speak with is that SMS surveys are good only for very, very quick polls. The burden on the respondent is high, and you can only squeeze in 3-4 questions before participation drops off - and if you haven't seen it yourself, believe me, it doesn't just stumble off the curb, it careens off the grand canyon.

Mobile web feels like it should be familiar since CAWI has taken over as the primary mode of choice in so many countries. However, the problem is that the mobile web isn't great yet for the vast majority of users. You still need a lot of patience. Think about a news page that requires 10 seconds to load, but then you spend 5 minutes reading. That's much more palatable when compared to refreshing screen after screen after screen of a mobile web survey. To reinforce this, check out Mobile Marketer's recent article about slow load time is the #1 performance issue on the mobile web.

Off course we believe in Applications (particularly Java where possible, native where needed). With iPhone App store just reaching it's 2 Billionth download in September, and Facebook's install base leaping from 2 million to 10.5 million in two months with the release of targeted Java versions, the path seems pretty clear to us...

The two main considerations in picking a mobile research methodology are capability (what kind of work am I enabled to do?) and coverage (who can I reach with that capability?). Those of us in research care so much about market share of mobile devices because it profoundly affects both elements.

We need to reach people. But it's not just any people we need - we need to reach the right people. A colleague of mine recently held a focus group and noted - "hey - there are an awful lot of artists and musicians in this group..." Did his recruiter get the mix of participants right? Maybe, but probably not (you'd think so too, if I told you the category ).

To a marketer, the more people you can reach, the more mindshare you can gain with your ads to promote revenue growth. Marketers talk about how to reach a target market with their message because they need to know they are spending their money wisely.  However, the reason researchers care about the number of people who see our "message" (say, a survey invitation), is because of our sampling frame. We need the right people to provide us with feedback in order to help solve the business problem at hand.

In short, researchers have to worry about it even more because the science of our analytics depends on it. Without reach, my colleague wouldn't even have had artists and musicians to talk to. 

So, it's very interesting to see what Gartner is predicting for the future of Mobile OS market share. They say Android will overtake Research In Motion’s BlackBerry OS, the iPhone OS and Windows Mobile to capture 14.5% of the smartphone market within three years.

"Symbian’s market share will fall from around half of the global market to just 39%, according to Gartner. Apple will maintain its third place and Windows Mobile will stay in fourth. However, RIM’s BlackBerry OS will fall from second place to fifth,"

If you're thinking about partnering with a survey system supplier to provide cellphone survey capabilities, then make sure they have an expertise and plan in place to meet all of the different flavours of these platforms as they explode in the next two years, otherwise you may never overcome the problem of reach.

For many outside of our industry, Market Research has always been a fuzzy concept, and let's face it, a weird choice of career.

But no longer! A major Hollywood movie (Last Chance Harvey) features a market researcher as a main character.



But what is she doing with pen and paper? What an antiquated approach! We would expect her to be using a computer assisted personal interviewing system or some kind of PDA survey software, of course. Where are these movie script writers doing their research?

Legal Note: This post in no way confirms that my wife convinced me to watch a movie which could be described as a Romance Drama.

Can anyone deny that the conventional understanding of what constitutes "real" research is being challenged? This Research Live article nails it:

"The rise of the Internet and social media has caused the received wisdom to be questioned on issues including sampling, anonymity, the relationship between researchers and participants, and whether there aren’t better ways to understand what people think, feel and do than just asking them."

With online research being at the forefront of so many researchers' mentality, do we move to an approach where we simply monitor and observe? Of course there's the problem of access as it relates to your sampling frame. But at least thanks to Anderson Analytics', we know 'Who's using Social Media?':




Personally, I think a moderate, measured approach is what's needed. If you read one article on this, check out the Zinc research blog entry on Social Media and so-called "legitimate research":

"...the traditional model for marketing research needs to be overhauled, and social media will be one of the impetuses for changing the role of research in the marketing toolkit. That said we should not throw out the existing research model too quickly"

And finally, if you want to read a sound, measured debate on both sides, then I'd suggest checking out this article: Is Social Media Measurement Meaningless?

As it gets harder for businesses (and researchers!) to reach people, the buzz about the affect of social networking applications is starting to get louder in our ears...

Apparently some people are wondering if the rise of direct forms of customer interaction like voice of the customer programs will make the use of Mystery Shoppers for mobile data collection a thing of the past.

Judi Hess, president of MSPA calls mystery shopping "a means to measure customer service, product knowledge, and sales ability." More important, she says, it offers subjective, targeted feedback that companies just can't get from less structured kinds of feedback, like social networking tools or surveys.

Ok, I can buy that. Read more here (you'll need to sign up for a free account).


Tom Anderson in particular is pushing us to think about the role of Social Networks and what he's calling "next gen marketing research". He recently interviewed representatives from Facebook and LinkedIn. It's just a start, but you can see that the social networks are starting to think about the convergence of these worlds, too.

Click here for the Podcast


All three of them will be a highlight of an upcoming ESOMAR panel session. This will be one you don't want to miss...



These are great articles to get us thinking about engagement, the future of survey conducting and the way we deliver insight from the market... But one of my favourite approaches comes from a seasoned researcher right here in Canada.

More on that next week...

Here are some articles of interest I ran across this week:

Phone Surveys Can't Last, Says Polling Boss

We are seeing "the tail end" of the life cycle of telephone surveys.


The "Hype Cycle" of Technology

Illustrates the growth, maturity and adoption of technologies--but most of all it looks at how much hype and media coverage these topics get.

Mobile Marketing Integration

An integrated marketing campaign is very important--mobile marketing can not only help with integration, but also enhance the impact of any marketing campaign.

Here are some articles of interest I ran across last week:

Cell-phone-only Penetration by Market

Interesting visual mapping the penetration of cell-phone-only households down to the local market level in the US.


Why Aren't You Leveraging Mobile?

The use of mobile marketing is increasing. What are you doing to take advantage of mobile marketing and mobile channels?


The Question Isn't What Research Is. It's What Research Will Be

CMOR is attempting to agree to a definition of market research to protect it from potential threats. But the move comes at a time when views of what research is -- or should be -- are in flux.

I've found myself pondering the effect of mobile technology on the future of research, and figured it warranted a blog post.  I've been involved with both handheld surveys and wireless technology for most of my career, and throughout that time I've been amazed at both how quickly and how slowly things change.

Mobile technology itself moves incredibly quickly, but adoption of technology can range from lightning fast to incredibly slow. Market research professionals are analytical and pragmatic by nature, so it is understandable that researchers have been slower to embrace new technology than many other industries. Ironically, market research is often a key driver for decisions which drive technological advances, yet it can take years for those advances to be reflected back into the research process itself.  

Methodology is central to any decision relating to survey research methods.  When new techniques are introduced to "improve" tried-and-true processes, it is important for researchers to understand all of the implications of the potential change before implementing it en masse.  So research about research, or more specifically about new techniques for conducting research, is very important. But this is easier said than done, as most researchers are so busy generating revenue through existing methods that they lack time to explore new ones.  The academic community breaks a lot of ground in this regard, but it takes time for academic research to reach--and to be embraced by--the commercial market research sector.

Recently I have seen mobile research being embraced as a reasonably mainstream approach for survey data collection.  It is still "leading edge", but it is no longer "bleeding edge" -- at least for face-to-face interviews and diary studies.  While the application of mobile survey software is still a niche play today, we are about to see it extend beyond its traditional application to touch every other aspect of survey research -- including web surveys, phone surveys, mystery shopping and other methods.

What intrigues me more than anything is where this bottom-up thinking will really lead the research industry. While we are busy planning for the evolution of survey research to involve mobile technology, I believe it is equally important to see things from the top-down: i.e. to realize that researchers are losing control of people's attention, and consumers are increasingly recognizing the value of their opinions.  Will the methodologies of today be effective in the future, or do we need to reshape our thinking to embrace emerging realities?

I believe the future of mobile survey research looks a lot different than the past.  We will not simply see old methods enhanced by new technology; entirely new methods will emerge around the cultural phenomena that shape our societies around the globe. There is no limit to the opportunities that will be enabled by social networking and location-aware technology, which will be bundled into mobile technology that will make today's most impressive devices seem as archaic as early PCs appear today.

Those of us who wrap our arms around the cultural changes that emerge as a result of new technology, rather than just trying to shape new technology to meet old and tired methods, will realize amazing new opportunities for mining insight from consumer opinions. There will be many false starts and a lot of experimentation, but in a few years we will look back at the way we did things in 2009 and be amazed by how dramatically human communication -- and in turn market research -- have changed within a very short time.

I'll share some of my predictions on this blog over the coming months. Today I just wanted to get the thread started with some background thoughts...

I recently read that in this economy "opt out is the new opt in". 

Yeah right.

This was literature on a site (which I won't mention) that sells marketing lists, so I had to chalk it up to wishful thinking rather than benevolent distribution of informed market information.

For those of us that take this stuff seriously and know that blatant Spamming erodes respondent cooperation, we need to know that even when we think we're following the rules, local laws might derail our efforts. As as we move too add SMS survey invitations to our toolkit, the landscape is getting tricky to navigate.

Now, marketers who advertise products and services such as alcohol, tobacco and gambling cannot market to any phone number or address which is registered on a do-not-contact registry within Utah or Michigan. It's all about protecting families, and you can check it out here.....

"But I don't advertise tobacco! I'm in research!"

Maybe... But my point is that we need to be careful. Extend this to our world of mobile data collection for a moment, and is it really so hard to believe that similar legislation could be introduced to protect certain groups.... like children for example, a segment for whom we already need explicit parental consent before we can engage.

"One odd aspect of the laws enforcing these programs is that even if a consumer double-opts-in for an SMS campaign and verifies that he or she is 21 or older, marketers would still be in violation if that person previously submitted their mobile phone number to either state’s do-not-contact list."

Could you be unwittingly inviting minors to participate in your mobile marketing survey? Or are you treating SMS invitations with less ethical scrutiny than email? Might be time to re-scrub that list...

Unlocked Palm Centros are on sale for over 50% off at TigerDirect.ca.

Grab them before their gone!

These Smartphones work great for mobile market research, and are a good device to use with Entryware mobile survey software.

It seems as though reseach online has recently reinvented themselves. They were always a great source for information, but they seem to be exploding with news and original content lately.

A recent article titled "Survey Geek vs. The Cord-Cutters" offers an audio interview with self-confessed 'survey geek' and blogger, Reg Baker.  There are also great links to relevant articles on the cell-only population and the affects on research. You can listen to it here:



This interview is great in my opinion, particularly in that he begins by describing the "cell-only" problem in terms of the sampling frame. He also eloquently yet concisely descsribes the issue of bias due to undercoverage, and how the target group of the research and the topic may affect results. Not to mention cost and data implications of doing a survey on mobile phone. Reg also identifies the "wireless mostly" problem. I won't replicate every point here in text, but here's a researcher who knows his stuff.

Brilliantly, he surmises (and hopes) that researchers will adapt to the problem by matching the method to the problem - execute "fit-for-purpose methodology decision", to paraphrase slightly.

But one thing stuck out to me... there's no mention of three significant and growing ways to conduct a mobile device survey, cellphone survey, mobile marketing survey (mobile research by whatever name you choose): WAP, SMS and Survey Applications.

Check out the latest numbers from CASRO. You might find it's worth getting ahead of the curve by adding other mobile techniques to your methodological tool box.

Here are some articles of interest I ran across this week:


Mobile Media Mergers Jump 46%

According to a new report from investment banker JEGI, mobile media and technology sector has seen a 46% increase in mergers and aquisitions in the second quarter of 2009.


Mobile Marketing: Mayberry or the Wild West?

Protect consumers and you protect the opportunity. That maxim applies to mobile marketing, where U.S. expenditures on mobile marketing for 2009 are $1.7 billion, according to MMA research. This prediction is expected to grow by about 26% to $2.16 billion next year.

Sprint and Harris Team Up to Make the 2010 Census Count

The US Government is going mobile to gather 2010 census information with 140,000 field workers using the Sprint-Harris units since April.

Mobile is mandatory. 

You can't get away from it and the evidence is everywhere. Even the University of Missouri has made smartphones mandatory for journalism freshmen!

And everyone now agrees that "Mobile" is more than 'my cell phone'. Mobile is changing the way we live. Business and society is seeing the benefit, but we are also seeing the pitfalls.

Rapid growth of the use of the wireless Internet is causing wireless broadband services to slow down and interrupt from data overload, and according to one report, the result is that mobile broadband sales are slowing. Don't get me wrong - there is still impressive growth overall, it's just that the growth is slowing as consumer frustration sets in.

There's more than an inconvenience factor... now we have to worry about 'cellphone elbow'. Doctors are indeed seeing more instances of this.

As people get more engaged with their devices, I'm betting we'll see more opportunities for doing deep and personal research with respondents, as can be done when people are recruited for a targeted, self-completed digital ethnography. 

Regardless of the specific research techniques to be employed, we will undoubtedly begin to see advances in the sophistication of mobile market research methods arising from this cultural shift.

In the meantime, watch this space for more updates on what fabulous new ailments arise as a result of increased mobility of the population!

Here is an article of interest I ran across this week:

Cellphone matrioshka

A creative visual look at the history of mobile phones.

Could you imagine trying to do mobile research on some of those big phones? It sure is amazing how many things a "tiny" mobile phone of today can do.