Techneos’ Vice President, Sean Conry and AJ Johnson, Vice President at Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange have won the Next Gen Market Research Disruptive Innovation Individual Award for their collaboration in the area of self-completion mobile digital ethnography.
Sean Conry and AJ Johnson utilized the Techneos SODA® solutions suite to combine quantitative and rich qualitative data collection across multiple mobile OS platforms via research Apps. They leveraged mobile data and GPS location capture with unstructured data such as photos to gain a deeper understanding of people’s moods, environments and decisions.
Their research enabled people to provide insights and share opinions when and where it was important to them and challenged current methodological views of the role that respondents can and should play in research. Their groundbreaking study also challenged assumptions of “typical” consumer segments, as well as which segments could be targeted using mobile methods.
For more information about the NGMR Disruptive Innovation Award, click here.
More people are opting for smartphones these days, with 28 percent of the U.S. mobile market snapping up the devices in the third quarter, according to Monday data from Nielsen.
The report attributed the growth to the popularity of Apple's iPhone, RIM's BlackBerry phones, and Android-based devices.
RIM and Apple are the top two operating systems in the U.S., with 30 percent and 28 percent of the market, respectively. Google's Android platform, while growing, sits at third place as the OS of choice for 19 percent of smartphone subscribers. However, in the last six months, Android devices were the most popular choice for those purchasing a new smartphone.
Globally, the U.S. smartphone penetration rate is similar to that in the U.K. However, more users have adopted the advanced devices in Spain and Italy, with 37 and 33 percent penetration, respectively, last quarter. Nielsen said the Symbian platform is the most popular OS in the European market.
We came across this recent article by Robert Wenig, Founder & CTO of Tealeaf Customer Experience Management Solutions and thought you would enjoy reading it as it relates to usability issues that impact PDA surveys, Mobile CAPI and Mobile Panel apps. The link to the TeaLeaf blog is at the end of this blog post.
Perhaps my thinking was backwards.
When I first started thinking mobile, I had it in my head that the functionality of a mobile app would be a subset of the existing desktop-browser experience.
When you start thinking about the:
A. The itty-bitty twit screen B. Lack of keyboard C. Limited bandwidth D. Limited OS and processor E. Limited storage
And then the fragmented eco-system of iPhone, iPad, iPod, Android, Blackberry, Palm, Nokia, Windows Phone with different OS levels and the like — the “subset” mentality was easy to make. Who is going to build native apps — isn’t every device manufacturer just going to try and build a browser that approximated desktop agility?
Perhaps somebody put something in my Coke, but now I’m seeing things differently. Native apps on mobile devices change the game.
Mobile applications will be a superset of Web-based applications. Why/how?
Native mobile apps can use all of the functionality/features of the device:
1. Scanners/cameras 2. GPS 3. Rich media 4. 2-way video 5. Gee — it’s a phone, so what about using the phone as part of the app? 6. Other sensors
What if native mobile apps are more secure than desktop web? Out-of-band authentication, tight links to the device (IMEI, serial number, etc.)?
[We're] working with the Pivot technology to organize data collected via digital ethnography research. We're also exploring coding the photographic data so that brand exposure can be grouped by mood, environment, or any other datapoint [collected]. The results were presented at the CASRO conference in New York earlier this year. Other clients of ours have been doing more experimentation since the technology is so promising for market research and insights.
ChangeWave Research, [had reported] on big gains for the iPhone in the smartphone market, in the wake of the iPhone 4's release. As that excitement has subsided, however, it appears that Android is continuing to make big gains among consumers.
The company's most recent survey, concluded September 23, talked to 4,000 respondents. Of the ones planning on buying a smartphone in the next 90 days, 37 percent said they would favor an Android unit, up from 30 percent in June.
The iPhone, however, just squeaked into first place with 38 percent saying that Apple's device would be their choice--and that's down significantly from 50 percent in June. BlackBerry got a slight bump from 5 percent to 6 percent, while Windows Mobile lost ground from 2 percent to 1 percent, and Palm's webOS stayed even at a nice round 0 percent.
BSkyB, O2 and Pfizer are among the big-name companies shortlisted for this year’s Research Magazine Awards.
The trio have been nominated along with Capital One, Channel 4, Digital UK and Guardian News & Media for the inaugural Best In-House Team award, which recognises excellence in clientside research.
Best Innovation also makes its awards debut this year, replacing the prize for Best Research Breakthrough which had been awarded in previous years.
The companies shortlisted for the Best Innovation Award:
BrainJuicer for SatisTraction Conquest for InfeXious Face for RT02 (Real-Time 02) Firefish for FishEye Hall & Partners for Engager Ipsos and Techneos for work in mobile ethnography
To learn more about Ipsos and Techneos, their work in mobile ethnography, please click here.
King Brown Partners (KBP) selected the Techneos SODA Mobile Access Platform to power a study to understand US consumers’ needs, sentiments and expectations for key categories of mobile applications.
Utilizing SODA, KBP added new mobile engagement features to their research repertoire making use of photo capture, two-way messaging, and alarms. Partnering with Techneos, KBP was equipped with a mobile survey solution deployed across BlackBerry devices for self-initiated one to two minute surveys over one and a half weeks.
Smartphones are rapidly gaining popularity in Brazil as recent price reductions have made these devices more accessible to people of all economic levels according to new research from The Nielsen Company. Sales of smartphones were up 128% in the first half of 2010 compared to the same period in 2009, and up 17% versus the first half of 2008, the period prior to the global recession. The volume of handsets sold also jumped 31%. Overall, smartphones make up about 10% of mobile phones owned in Brazil.
The average price of smartphones dropped 2% in the first six months of the year compared to the same period in 2009 and by 5% versus 2008.
In this post we have extracted some interesting facts about the behavior of iPhone users in the United States and Latin America.
The Latin market promises to break records this year in sales as the overall market in 2010 in Latin America is making a recovery in technology sales.
This is not only because of the change in the amount of sales, but also the characteristics of the products purchased. According to several studies, in 2010, sales of smartphones could reach a historic level in Latin America with approximately 11 million units-4 million more than in 2009.
Guess what are the three things people take when they leave home? - Wallet, keys and yes, mobile phones! Imagine browsing your Facebook account and accessing the news while on a bus on your way to work, or passing time playing games on your Ipad and checking the latest stock trends while waiting on an airport for a business trip? Sound all too familiar?
Gone are the days of paper surveys or email questionnaires where you often get poor response rates. With the advancement of mobile technology, market research surveys can be seamlessly integrated into mobile apps, making it more fun for consumers to respond than traditional methods. Mobile platforms such as Revelation Mobile, FocusForums’ Iphone App and Techneos’ Soda are just some of the mobile survey platforms available in the market.
According to Frank-Thomas Naether, the Managing Director of NMRC, “Mobile research is about ‘capturing the moment’. This is highly relevant when it comes to gaining insights into the decision making process of participants. There are many tools and methodologies available in the market, some of them are really interesting and fascinating, and offers many possibilities to researchers”, said Naether.
He added, “Mobile Internet devices will become more and more central in everyone's life. Everybody is online and communication is possible in both directions. Online tracking studies are an interesting possibility and GPS technology will offer additional valuable information on how, when and where people do what. Mobile Research is still in its infancy and the possibilities are endless”.
IDG News Service - Google's Android was expected to become the world's second most-used smartphone OS by 2012, after the Symbian OS, but now accelerating sales will help it get there this year, according to analysts.
Android was in fourth place during the first three months of 2010, trailing the Research In Motion (RIM) and Apple smartphone OSes by a margin of about 5 million and 3 million, according to market research company Gartner, which tracks the number of smartphones sold to end users.
However, since then sales have picked up significantly. In February, Google said 60,000 Android phones were sold per day and in June that number had gone up to 160,000, according to Google. Today, 200,000 Android-based smartphones are sold every day, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said on Wednesday.
The mobile medium offers various channels that are ideal for collecting information about merchants’ and marketers’ target consumers, including SMS, the mobile Web and applications.
Survey-based market research company Ipsos and survey software provider Techneos are working together to pilot new technologies and applications for mobile research.
Their latest project called “The Great British Weekend” was conducted during the May 2010 Bank Holiday long weekend using Techneos’ survey research application, service-oriented development of applications (SODA) across multiple mobile phones, including Nokia and BlackBerry devices.
“[Marketers and merchants should] start making it easier for their customers to tell you what they think, where and when it’s important to them, and do it now,” said Sean Conry, vice president at Techneos, Vancouver, BC. “Mobile is the perfect channel for learning from your marketplace because it helps you to get anytime-everywhere feedback.
Ericsson, which provides technology and services to telecom operators around the globe, estimates we’ve hit another milestone in the Internet becoming increasingly mobile. The company claims, based on estimates based on industry information, that the 5 billionth mobile subscription was accounted for on Thursday, July 8.
The 5 billion mark was hit largely thanks to a surge in mobile subscriptions in emerging markets like China and India, the company says. In the year 2000, about 720 million people had mobile subscriptions, less than the amount of users China alone has today, still according to Ericsson.
Mobile broadband subscriptions are growing at similar pace and are expected to amount to more than 3.4 billion by 2015 (from 360 million in 2009).
While researchers normally prescribe when feedback is wanted from people, a "push" approach, reaching out to people asking to hear from them, a recent mobile research project has turned the tables on this traditional method. Ipsos and Techneos collaborated on a study called, "The Great British Weekend". It was conducted during the May 2010 Bank Holiday Weekend.
The study enabled people to provide insights and share their opinions, when and where it was important to them. The mobile surveys went beyond simple questions and answers incorporating GPS location and photo capture, and were deployed via apps across multiple mobile phone types, such as Nokia and BlackBerry.
Marketers and researchers can leverage the concept and findings of this mobile apps-based study to engage just about any consumer segment, hear their opinions and gain their feedback at the point of experience.
The new 1.3 version gives researchers access to information such as addresses, database lists or results from other surveys to be pre-populated and assigned to individual participants or interviewers for completion.
Researchers can also keep in contact with respondents through an email-style messaging system, and a data-cleaning option corrects any fieldwork errors at the source, rather than at the end of the project.
Drawing from research data from one of its syndicated studies, ZINC Research points to a strong correlation between these two phenomena [Web 2.0 and its social media platforms, tools and applications]. The report’s highlights:
Mobile phone usage
71% of Canadians (70% of males and 73% of females) now use a mobile telephone; The majority of these users are young adults (18-34 years old, 76%) and adults (35-54 years old, 73%), most of whom have a higher level of education (college, 74%, university, 73%).
Mobile Internet access
44% [of Canadian] mobile phone users can and do use their mobile phones to connect to the Internet;
The majority of mobile Internet users once again skew towards the two core adult segments (18-34, 58%, 35-54, 42%) and towards higher education levels (college, 46%, university, 44%); mobile Internet surfers tend to skew more male (46% compared to 41% of female users).
According to data from comScore MobiLens, smartphone penetration in the U.S. has grown from 11 percent of mobile subscribers in April 2009 to more than 20 percent in April 2010 -- nearly double in just one year. The total number of smartphone subscribers now totals more than 48 million. The biggest player in the smartphone market remains RIM with its popular Blackberry devices, currently owning more than 40 percent share of smartphone subscribers. Apple holds a firm grip on the #2 position with 25 percent share of mobile subscribers, up from 20 percent in April 2009.
Samsung is hoping to double its global smartphone market share from around 5 percent to 10 percent by the fourth quarter, according to a senior Samsung executive.
Lee Donjoo, senior vice president of the company's mobile communications division, told Bloomberg that Samsung is banking on the success of its Galaxy S smartphone. His comments largely echo those made recently by J.K. Shin, the president of Samsung's mobile communications unit.
Samsung has made it clear it plans to significantly boost its smartphone presence this year. In February the company said it aimed to triple its smartphone shipments this year, up from 6 million units last year. A jump to a 10 percent share of the smartphone market could catapult the world's No. 2 handset maker into the No. 4 slot among smartphone makers, just past HTC.
Luminosity Marketing, a Techneos client, has completed a US Consumer Study using the Techneos SODA® Mobile Access Platform as its technology solution. See the full press release.
Luminosity's “Boomerang Consumer Study” was conducted to help marketers better understand the lifestyles, attitudes and purchasing habits of young adults called Boomerangers who have returned home to live with their parents.
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