Apple, Facebook and carrier mobile missteps highlighted in Adobe report
Adobe reveals several interesting insights in its new Mobile Benchmark Report, including that sharing content on Facebook is down, browsing on smaller phones is shrinking, Pinterest is the most mobile social network and Wi-Fi surpasses mobile networks for browsing.
The findings are based on a review of over 18 billion visits to 10,000 Web sites and 700 million app use sessions. The findings suggest that the mobile landscape is far from being set and that there is still room for upstarts to shake up the landscape.
?Everyone talks about Facebook all the time but there really is some leadership going on in mobile in some other social media networks,? said Tamara Gaffney, principal analyst at Adobe Digital Index.
Screen size
Adobe?s findings suggest that the new iPhone, which is being released today, needs a larger screen size if Apple is to reverse a decline in mobile browser market share.
Specifically, Chrome Mobile?s market share has increased by 5.7 percent to 34.6 percent while Safari Mobile fell by 2.6 percent to 59.1 percent. Overall, Web browsing on four-inch or larger phones grew by 132 percent year-over-year while browsing on smaller phones that are four inches or less decreased by 11 percent.
Mobile social networks
Adobe also took a look at how mobile specific social media networks are based on referrals coming to a Web site from a social media network using a mobile device.
Overall, 36 percent of all referral visits from social networks to retail sites come from tablets and smartphones.
However, Pinterest is the most mobile social network with 64 percent of its referrals triggered via mobile browsers, suggesting that users are going to Pinterest with the intention of clicking around and clicking off the site to other sites more so than they do on Facebook or Twitter.
?It was unexpected for us because we keep hearing about Facebook and Twitter being so much more mobile,? Ms. Gaffney said.
?We do use a lot of Twitter and Facebook on our mobile devices,? she said. ?It is definitely not the case that Facebook and Twitter are low use on mobile.
?But when you are clicking around, it is really Pinterest that is driving a lot more of the clicks.?
Tumblr revenue?
In terms of revenue, Tumblr referrals drive the highest revenue per visit from mobile devices, 39 percent more than Facebook. On average, anyone who comes out of Tumblr from a tablet to a retailer is likely to spend to $2.57 and from a smartphone, 67 cents. These numbers are higher than on other social media networks.
In terms of revenue, Tumblr referrals drive the highest revenue per visit from mobile devices, 39 percent more than Facebook. On average, anyone who comes out of Tumblr from a tablet to a retailer is likely to spend to $2.57 and from a smartphone, 67 cents. These numbers are higher than on other social media networks.
?We don?t talk about Tumblr very much, but when they send traffic to retailers, it is very high quality,? Ms. Gaffney said. ?And coming up for the holiday season, retailers really should be looking at Tumblr.?
Tumblr told Adobe that the reasons why users are spending more are because the network has always been visually oriented and because its users are higher income.
Content sharing
When it comes to sharing content from mobile devices, Adobe found that mobile users are sharing more digital magazine content via text messaging than ever before. The use of Apple iMessage saw the strongest increase with 259 percent.
Sharing content via Facebook is down by 42.6 percent.
?This is an interesting support for the fact that people are wanting to share in smaller sets of friends - that their social media networks have become perhaps overly broad,? Ms. Gaffney said.
?That?s we believe Whatsapp become so popular so quickly and why Instagram so popular so quickly,? she said.
While Facebook has taken steps to enable users to form subgroups on the social network, it is not easy or intuitive to leverage these tools, per Ms. Gaffney.
Wi-Fi wins
Other findings include that more consumers are choosing to access the Web via Wi-Fi, with over 50 percent of smartphone browsing and 93 percent of tablet browsing now come from Wi-Fi rather than cellular networks.
With no relief expected in the cost of data on mobile networks, the trend toward Wi-Fi is expected to continue as Wi-Fi becomes more widely available.
?Mobile carriers have encouraged people to go off their systems whenever possible,? Ms. Gaffney said. ?So as a result, at some point you might see us become less dependent on having a mobile data plan. Or perhaps we can step a level down in our mobile data plan and spend less money.
?It is going to be an interesting next five years to see who is going to make more money off of mobile data,? she said. ?It could actually be things like Comcast with their Xfinity hotspots anywhere kind of idea. It could people who we haven?t even thought of yet putting up Wi-Fi networks in retail places.?
Final Take
?Chantal Tode is senior editor on Mobile Marketer, New York
?Chantal Tode is senior editor on Mobile Marketer, New York