The overriding reason for this has been the spread of smartphones and much has changed over the course of a year. According to research company IDC, 100.9 million smartphones shipped in the final quarter of 2010, a figure that was up 87.2% on the previous year.

Eleven months later and a seminal report from data analysts Neilsen showed how things had moved on in 2011. In the US the vast majority of those under the age of 44 now have smartphones and usage was significantly up across the board.

It’s not just the 40% of teenagers who own one, but also the 18% (up 50% on 2010) of people over the age of 65 who have them. Just as importantly not only do they own them, they are using them and the UK is as enthusiastic as they are across the Atlantic in the US.

Research last month from EPiserver reported that 59% of UK consumers now own a smartphone and 18% have a tablet device… and more than a third have used them to make a purchase, a figure that will undoubtedly rise as the Christmas season approaches.

These are exciting times. At Wapple we have been predicting these numbers for years – sometimes in the face of opposition that didn’t believe that mobile could ever stand against the bigger brother that is desktop internet.

But today many people reach for their phones before opening up a laptop or even moving to a desktop PC.

So how did we get here? What were the events of 2011 that caused the mobile web to hit critical mass? Naturally when it comes to tipping points there are multiple factors but Google’s advances in the mobile space have ignited the sector and consequently caused mobile marketing to explode.

Google’s Android is now the dominant operating system after finally taking over from Apple in 2011 and the company has thrown its weight behind several initiatives to support the industry. In Q2 Google launched ‘Google Sites Mobile Landing Pages’, aka Google Mobilize, a new tool to help SMEs launch mobile websites.

This provided simple, template-based sites for customers and was free for them to use, although this was not a philanthropic gesture on behalf of the company. This was all about mobile advertising revenue with SMEs signing up for the AdWords platform, not that SMEs seemed to mind too much.

The company followed this in Q3 with the launch of Google Wallet as it joined American Express Serve, Mastercard Paypass, Visa Wallet and Isis in offering mobile payments services. According to mobile analyst G + (not related) this market will be worth a whopping $670 million by 2015 of which 40% will be ‘digital goods’.

Last and not least the company recently announced GoMo, a significant signpost in the natural development road of the mobile web. Google had previously announced that 79% of advertisers had sites that were not optimised for mobile devices, a truly extraordinary figure. The GoMo initiative helps agencies and companies by using 12 mobile web experts to create mobile-friendly sites.

For example, mobile ad networks serve billions of page views so this is a huge opportunity for their advertisers but often they waste this by linking their banner ad to their website, rather than a mobile optimised version. GoMo will help prevent this and the unwanted 80%+ bounce rate that comes from a non-optimised mobile web site.

Google know that mobile web services represent the future of our connected lives. The browser is at the heart of their devices, both mobile phones and the new Chromebook laptops. Wapple once suggested that entering a URL on a mobile would be easier than dialling a number. Today we see the Google bar on the homescreen and the dialler stored away like any other application. Interfaces like this from Google have subtly influenced users to further the journey that already started – a shift towards consumption of digital services through the devices they carry in their pockets and places on the bedside table every night.

But it wasn’t all down to Google. Other companies jumped into the space with their own positive statements on mobile. Global brand Unilever announced that it would use mobile as its primary marketing channel within ten years, in a strategy that includes covering mobile data charges for those interacting with its brands.

Moreover clothes retailer Gap claimed in 2011 that its investment in mobile had helped the company treble its online conversions, citing its new mobile commerce platform, targeted mobile ads and a GPS-based store locator as the elements behind this surge.

Then there’s the automotive industry. Every week eBay sells more than 2,000 cars on mobile web and innovation is this sector is rampant. In some cases, QR codes have been used to take the customer from a brochure or TV to a test drive and AutoTrader recently reported that in 2011 45% of its customers had accessed AutoTrader Mobile while ON a dealer’s forecourt to research a car.

Significant dates have also pushed mobile web through the last 12 months. Mothers Day purchases of gifts and especially flowers have seen mobile become the platform of choice for many and the recent Thanksgiving Day celebrations in the US has seen a similar spike. Christmas, as already noted, will push mobile transactions via the mobile web to a new level.

Of course, there’s more to come. At Wapple we’re busy getting the message out to those businesses and brands that haven’t yet caught the wave. There are plenty more verticals still to bring their services to the mobile masses. Thankfully, with great technology platforms like ours it’s no longer the daunting task that it once was.

Acquisitions and mergers have also driven the market. The recent acquisition of Mobile Interactive Group by Velti and the  merger between iLoop Mobile and Lenco Mobile is testament to this. Expect further market consolidation in 2012.

But there are also grounds for caution and it might be propitious to return to Google for the numbers. Its 2011 study that only 21% of its biggest advertisers had a mobile-optimised web presence.

Google used 200 diagnostic points to measure each advertiser’s mobile readiness, with criteria such as load time, device detection and mobile optimisation, so this is an in-depth study.

There is still work to do. With at least 10% of web sites now accessed by mobile and rising daily, this state of play shows how important imobile strategy is. Sub-standard mobile experiences damage brands and send customers away. Companies, big and small alike, need to treat mobile with as much as respect as they do for all traditional channels. Perhaps even more so – after all this is the platform of the future, the platform that connects with consumers wherever they are.

Mobile Lazy
Serving your PC website direct to mobile browsers is not friendly; it is ‘Mobile Lazy’! Your website will not recognise the mobile user’s real time location or their behaviour, you will not be able to consider the unique capabilities of the mobile device, you create barriers that prevent the consumer interacting easily with you and potentially a needlessly poor experience for your customer.

Neither should you assume that mobile friendly means dumbing down your website or brand and providing lowest-common-denominator output to cater for all devices. There are technologies out there, including Wapple’s, that allow you to present rich and dynamic content, whilst optimising the best experience possible for every single type of mobile phone and customer.

Mobile Friendly
A mobile-friendly website should present the same web company branding but one that is designed for small-screen display and browsing. It should take into account the mobility of the consumer and present only relevant information and content from the website for their ‘in-situ’ need.

It should interact with them for their unique device and provide mobile-specific opportunities such as location-based offerings. Interaction should be simple and easy with few clicks, forms should be low maintenance and contact numbers should display as click-to-call.

Here at Wapple we put a team together to visit a number of urls to determine exactly how friendly or lazy some of these big brand websites are across a spectrum of mobile devices.
There is clearly a lot of knowledge to impart but it is not rocket science and over the coming weeks I intend to demonstrate exactly how easy it is to become Mobile Friendly by publishing examples of websites that are Mobile Friendly and those that are utterly Mobile Lazy…you might be surprised by the results.

To get things kicked off, here is our first example Covergirl are…Mobile Friendly

1/10: Presented the PC website – site breaks/crashes the mobile browser so nothing displays

2 or 3/10: Presented the PC website – site takes too long to load and/or has key elements that are not supported by many devices. Mobile consumer compelled to leave

4: Presented the PC website – pages render on mobile device but the website does not present most relevant content for mobile users. Also zooming in for content and out for context is frustrating.

5/10: Redirected to a mobile site but the mobile experience is basic and the user experience poor which is not in line with digital branding of website. Lowest common denominator approach

6 or 7/10: Redirected to a great mobile site for smart phones but the experience is poor on older devices. And /or the content is not relevant for mobile users

8 or 9/10: Redirected to a great mobile site experience that accommodates consumers on the move no matter what device they have.

10/10: Served mobile relevant content from the website domain and underlying application with an experience catered for mobile users. The site is optimised for all mobile devices old and new. They included unique usability for the mobile customer eg instore experiences, scan QR codes or promotions, mobile campaigns.

We have previously commented about the death of Symbian-http://blog.wapple.net/the-death-of-symbian-is-another-new-and-exciting-start-for-nokia/ may,ironically, give a boost to Nokia’s future, but is the spike in the company’s share price a blip or a sea-change in the handset behemoth’s fortunes?

Nokia certainly seems to think it’s good news for the company and rushed out a statement that ‘opportunities for the growth of Nokia’s smartphone business will be greatest with the Windows Phone”. We agree with them, because Windows Mobile 7 is a great platform.

Naturally there are all types of theories about patents with some going as far to say that Google’s deal makes Nokia more attractive as an acquistion for Microsoft. But Microsoft has patents of its own and that makes Nokia’s acquisition less attractive. But, enough already of acquisitions, let’s hear it for the operating systems, may the best one win (the greatest market share).

Why bother with a mobile campaign during the Summer Holidays? There’s no point. Nobody will be engaged. Everybody will be switched off. But that’s where you’d be wrong. With research showing that websites are being accessed by between 10/20% on mobile devices (and rising fast), and users considering themselves ‘always-on’, the holiday season may be a great time to launch campaigns.



There can never be a better time to engage customers. Instead of wedged between meetings and commuting train carriages, they are now wedged between two trees on a hammock browsing the mobile web and open to the idea of anything.

Summer is here, the living is easy… and so are your potential customers.

It’s hard to see any short-term prospects for the company as its new CEO, Stephen Elop grapples with the charred timber of the ‘burning deck’ he so memorably described earlier this year.

But of course Elop only refers to its Symbian Operating System. We think it’s much too early to sound the death knell for Nokia. This is a company that used to make rubber products and sell wood pulp. It has a history of re-inventing and re-energising itself and while its relationship with Microsoft still has some way to go, this may be the saviour of the company.

We think that Windows Mobile 7 is an excellent OS and the future looks brighter for Nokia once this reaches critical mass. With Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer recently announcing increased marketing spend and industry mavens very positive about its impact, Nokia may well surprise the Cassandras and naysayers. It’s going to be an interesting 12 months.

Google Wallet, American Express Serve, Mastercard Paypass, Visa Wallet and Isis, a mobile payment based on the near-field communication platform, have all being launched to service this market, and while industry insiders expect near-field communication (NFC) to become the dominant platform over the next three years, it is brands that need to act now if they are to benefit from this huge revenue stream.

Potential customers of mobile payments have little interest in which platform they will use, only that it works whenever they want to make a purchase. Similarly they will insist on the same from the mobile websites of companies they would like to buy from.

Any integration of a mobile payments platform must be done in parallel with a mobile website that is optimised. With digital goods making up 40% of that huge $690 billion figure, brands need to choose their partners wisely, and to merge that decision with a well-thought mobile strategy… and a mobile website that is fast, secure and scalable.

Well, I care deeply and I imagine you do too. I care for EVERY mobile OS and ALL the many thousands of mobile devices that run on them and therefore I was compelled to read.  To my shock I discovered that the individual who asked the question does not care and dismisses a vast percentage of mobile web consumers in the US!

He is Jeff Williams, a UX lead at Marketing Drive and he publishes the fact that he and the company he represents don’t in fact know how to automatically optimize for ALL devices & browsers, yet they are building a mobile experience for the 4th largest retailer in US.

That retailer has, no doubt, invested heavily in their mobile strategy and trusted their mobile site with Jeff and friends at Marketing Drive but their mobile site is only going to run on Android and iOS because when Jeff realised he couldn’t make it work on the others his colleague said “Who cares”!

Wanted! For crimes against mobile OS

Oh dear!  Perhaps somebody might advise me who the fourth largest retailer in the US is so that I may inform them of current traffic stats in their region.

64% of US traffic to the many thousands of mobile sites and major brand ad campaigns on Wapple is generated by Android (34%) and iOS (30%) combined therefore 36%, I’ll repeat that, THIRTY SIX PERCENT is generated by all other operating systems that Jeff and his colleague don’t care about.

Admittedly, when I first read his article I was a little upset and may have suggested he was being lazy but let’s be clear here I don’t hate Jeff (who could), on reflection I can kind of see how he gave up trying.  He was attempting to create single versions of the site for each OS (let alone the thousands of variants he would have encountered trying to adapt to all the makes and models).  If he had built the site on Wapple technology he would have built just 1, I’ll repeat that too, JUST ONE SINGLE SITE and then applied simple conditions to it so only the smart phones got the cool features he was trying to implement.

Jeff, if you’re reading this, get in touch, it’s not too late to fix.

The FT has always led the way towards subscription albeit across the largest customer base possible offering a mixture of free and premium content. Its early subscription models have proved largely successful and now, by launching a mobile browser-based app it is looking to access customers across ALL mobile devices not just Apple’s App Store and its onerous revenue-share model.

For the Financial Times Web App, users register for free and can access up to ten free articles a month and the FT’s move as the first major publisher to launch a Web app has been widely acclaimed. Their latest break-out from Apple’s walled garden is a strategic move shared by many other publishers and brands that will have huge implications for the mobile web.

Taking a Mobile Web route may reduce costs and increase efficiency as well as optimising the installed user-base, so we applaud the FT for its latest digital decision.

They allow you to tailor chunks of functionality so they only appear on specific versions of a particular mobile operating system – and up to now, we only enabled it for the BlackBerry OS.

We promised that there would be more, and indeed there are! We have added the following operating system rules:

• Android
• iPhone OS
• Web OS
• Windows Mobile
• Symbian

In addition, we’ve added a dynamic rule to test for the vendor name, so if you wanted, you could target a campaign at all Samsung phones.

Couple these with our impressive super rules, and you can target a Samsung phone, on Android, running Froyo!

Dynamic rules are Canvas only right now, but they will be coming to WAPL in the very near future – we’ll keep you posted on our progress.