7 Mobile Insights May 2009 including iPhone App and Java download statistics

The past 9 months have been interesting in more ways than Apple achieving 1 billion app downloads from the iPhone appstore:

1. Mobile ad spend in 2008 in the UK exceeded expectations and doubled vs. 2007 (http://tinyurl.com/qengsl)
2. Over 400% growth in apps downloaded 2008 vs 2007 driven by the iPhone Appstore as well as free appstores (Getjar, Mobile9, Mobango, etc), device manufacturer appstores (Blackberry App World, Nokia Ovi, Samsung Mobile Applications, etc) and mobile operators (Vodafone Appstore, O2 Limus, Orange World Appstore, etc)
3. Although iPhone apps get all the attention Golden Gekko has found that when launching apps/games across both iPhone and other platforms the number of downloads on other platforms (Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, Blackberry, etc) outnumber iPhone 10 to 1 (contact us for more info).
4. With approx 2% iPhone device penetration Apple Appstore has an impressive 12% (21% including iTouch) market share in volume of mobile apps downloaded in Europe and North America (Strategy Analytics: How Apple Change the Market for Mobile Applications, http://tinyurl.com/o52cm7).
5. Although iPhone app development can cost as little as $12.000 a well-designed app can cost anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000, take six to eight weeks to develop, and a couple more weeks more to be approved by Apple (http://tinyurl.com/qke9xb)
6. 52% of mobile users play games on their phone and about one-in-ten mobile phone users in Europe (8%) claim to have participated in mobile marketing efforts (MMA European Mobile Attitude and Usage Study, December 2008)
7. 51 percent of mobile phone users in the USA access content using their mobile phone on a weekly basis (http://tinyurl.com/p95opg)

Wednesday & Happy New Year: Top 3 Challenges & Opportunities in 2009

It's the last day of 2008 and everybody is looking back at the year and making predictions for the year ahead. While others are are doing this we will look ahead and focus on the actions required to meet the challenges and opportunities in 2009. The current financial climate is the most talked about challenge with the most common advice being to buckle up and sit still until things improve. For mobile marketing and services we disagree. Even with a financial meltdown there are still great opportunities ahead and that by tackling the challenges highlighted here the mobile marketing industry and in particular Golden Gekko will continue with high two digit growth in 2009.

1. From awareness to transactions
One of the great advantages of the Internet is that there is a direct measurable path from driving awareness of a product (banners, videos, interactive websites, etc) to generating transactions whether it is for travel, physical goods on Amazon or a subscription for an online magazine. Although the mobile may not be able to compete with e-commerce it has another even greater advantage. With the mobile we can link advertising through any media (TV, Radio, Web, Print, etc) to transactions using mobile coupons and ticketing on the high-street. The technology is already available in e.g. 50.000+ retailers across the UK and over 80% of all food food retailers in Sweden but currently not being used due to lack of awareness among marketers and training. Let's quit talking about how difficult it is and just make it happen. I know we will!

Action in 2009: Join together to make mobile transactions happen on a mass market scale across Europe.

2. Stop talking about measurements and start measuring
One of the key barriers to the success of mobile advertising highlighted by the industry in 2008 has been lack of standards for measuring. To tackle this the industry has set up various committees in the IAB, MMA and GSMA with the intention of establishing common metrics and standards. We think however that the attention to this issue is vastly overstated. The MMA has done a fantastic job establishing standards for mobile display advertising although additional improvements will be required over time. The challenges with mobile advertising metrics are almost exactly the same as for the Internet including targeting, impressions, click-through-rates, fraudulent behaviour, etc. Nor is the technology something unique or complicated. So, let's stop using metrics as an excuse for major brands and agencies not investing more money in mobile advertising and focus our energy on delivering great results and proving that they will generate great value with or without perfect metrics.

Action in 2009: Get on with it and deliver the ads, metrics and reports that the clients and partners are asking for.

3. Beyond the iPhone
2008 has certainly been the year of the iPhone and Golden Gekko has received at least one request for an iPhone application every day during the last couple of months despite the fact that the iPhone has limited reach and some major drawbacks in terms of functionality and more specifically distribution. The iPhone has been great for highlighting the need and opportunity for downloadable applications and the creative freedom that applications give brands, agencies and developers. The iPhone is however not the only phone that can deliver a great customer experience. Most of the 10.000+ iPhone applications available on iTunes could just as well have been delivered on the Nokia N95, Blackberry Bold, Samsung F480, Sony-Ericsson C905 or X1, Motorola RAZR2, LG Viewty, HTC Touch and of course the G1. The user experience on the iPhone is great with flashy graphics but the enabling technology for great mobile applications is available on almost any phone which means that mass market reach is possible today.

Action in 2009: Continue to develop great iPhone applications but also show that great applications and services can be delivered to almost any mobile phone enabling mass market reach today!


More challenges will follow as soon as we have tackled the ones above so expect a new top 3 list...

We look forward to a fantastic year for mobile marketing in 2009 and until then Happy New Year!

Golden Gekko

Friday: Golden Gekko picks up three mobile marketing awards in San Diego

Mobile applications that help guys seduce women wins global award for best use of mobile marketing in mobile branding campaign 2008

14 November 2008: Golden Gekko, the leading mobile applications developer for creative marketing campaigns picked up three awards at the Mobile Marketing Awards in San Diego Thursday. The awards include Absolut Vodka in partnership with Great Works for best use of mobile marketing in a branding campaign in North America, Lynx Effect for BBH for best use of mobile marketing in a branding campaign in EMEA and Lynx Effect for best use of mobile marketing in a branding campaign globally.

- This shows that mobile marketing campaigns that go beyond text messaging and WAP-sites can have an amazing impact in terms on brand perception, said Magnus Jern. In both of the award winning campaigns it was the end-user that chose to engage with the brand rather than being pushed into it.

During the last year we’ve seen an explosive growth in downloads of mobile applications and widgets much thanks to the enhanced user experience in comparison to browser based mobile services. The trend has been boosted by the iPhone application store but also by Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry and Sony-Ericsson who all encourage developers to produce applications for their handsets and users to download “cool” applications. Golden Gekko was one of the early advocates of leveraging the application trend in branding campaigns and we now see that it’s paying off as millions of users are consuming mobile marketing applications in a similar way to watching youtube videos by major brands.

- The Lynx campaign is definitely our greatest success so far with the Absolut Drinks application as a close contender. We get calls from media agencies every week who ask if they can use them as industry best practice examples of how mobile marketing should be done, said Jimmy Nordbeck, Marketing Director and Co-founder.

Campaign: Lynx ‘get in there’ mobile tools
Agency: BBH
Client: Unilever/Lynx
Video available here: http://www.goldengekko.com/Videos/LynxEffect.mpg
Mobile site: http://m.lynxeffect.com
Launched in January 2008 for Lynx in the UK the campaign consists of a mobile website and 5 downloadable applications that help the men ‘get in there’ with the women including instruction videos. The campaign has been a massive success with hundreds of thousands of downloads, great viral distribution effect and most importantly, a massive positive response from the men who are now obviously much more successful in the mating game.


Campaign: Absolut Vodka Mobile Drinks
Agency: Great Works
Client: V&S/Absolut Vodka
Mobile site: http://m.absolut.com

The Absolut Drinks mobile campaign launched in the US October 2007 is available to download for free and includes 1000+ drink recipes, top lists of most popular drinks, random drinks, a home bar search function and videos with famous bartenders mixing drinks. The service was launched exclusively to registered members on absolutdrinks.com and had about 50.000 active users in the first 12 months.


For more information, please contact:
Jimmy Nordbeck
Marketing Director
Tel: + 46 708 20 58 00
Email: jn@goldengekko.com


About Golden Gekko
Golden Gekko is a leading international provider of mobile marketing solutions. The company develops award-winning mobile applications and services that run on billions of phones worldwide, including the iPhone. Golden Gekko has already delivered successful projects to leading global brands including Absolut Vodka, Accenture, Cadbury’s, Coca Cola, Novartis, Paramount, Perfetti, Sara Lee, Unilever and Vodafone. Golden Gekko has offices in the England, Sweden, Spain, Cambodia and US. Information about Golden Gekko and its services can be found at www.goldengekko.com