mobilestance.com

The Nielsen Company released some new statistics about the mobile habits of US tweenagers. The study revealed that 35% of the demo own a mobile phone, 20% use text messaging, 21% use ring and/or answer tones, and 5% use the mobile internet.

Amazingly, what is oft looked at as a “youth channel” remains anything but. The “sweet spot” in US mobile marketing remains the 18-34 segment, with teenagers remaining viable for most mobile entertainment propositions, and the 35-44 year old segment still leaning towards utilitarian uses of SMS and the mobile web.

Remarkably, the tween mobile profile is nearly identical to the 55-64 segment, if only in terms of handset ownership and frequency of mobile data usage… although I am quite sure that the mobile data usage cases of these two segments are quite dissimilar in terms of content, context, and value proposition!

From the “next big thing” file, the latest in mobile’s long tradition of incredulous, industry-promoting “research studies” comes from Screen Digest, who conclude that there will be over 28 million mobile video subscribers in North America by 2011. That’s right folks… in a scant three years mobile video is expected to increase by a factor of 20! Never mind that recent surveys have demonstrated that US consumers have little interest in mobile video, or that m:metrics has shown that only 0.6 percent of US mobile subscribers are currently utilizing mobile video services.

The Screen Digest press release makes little mention of research methodology, other than that “The data in this press release is taken from Screen Digest’s latest report, Mobile TV: Business Models and Opportunities. The report includes analysis of the current market situation, business models and value chain, as well as analysis of the delivery mechanisms, broadcast technology and the impact of regulation. 25 countries are reviewed in the report.”

More than likely Screen Digest’s release and corresponding “report” are designed to fuel the speculative bubble that has enveloped the mobile space for the better part of the last decade, giving the pitchmen another bullet point in their case for the “huge, can’t miss opportunity” that is mobile video.

Too bad, really… as it’s “research” like this that has continued to misalign expectation of the channel, and usually only serves to thwart the efforts of legitimate mobile marketers in the space.