Mobile phone users under the age of 16 are extremely sophisticated, with deep brand experiences and preferences. This raises significant questions for network operators, handset manufacturers and service providers regarding how best to engage an increasingly important market segment.

You could be forgiven for a sense of déjà vu. After all, rising mobile phone use amongst children is not a new phenomenon. As long ago as 2004 the Guardian was reporting growth in ownership amongst under-10s, [1] and media coverage concerning potential health concerns can be traced back even further. However, our ever-increasing reliance on, and immersion in, mobile phones and the digital services we use them to access, justify revisiting the topic.

Apple is a leading force in the smartphone market because they simplify services and enable people to fit their world in their pocket.

Yesterday, Steve Jobs announced the latest iPhone 4 at WWDC but what struck me was the way he structured his presentation. Jobs focused early on about the success of the App Store for both consumers and developers. There is now 225,000 apps available, 5 billion downloads and Apple has paid out $1 billion dollars to developers. Apple has created a vibrant market place for mobile apps and services with more big brands to launch later this year. That is success unrivalled by anyone.

To cover all this first was smart because Jobs was focusing on the services and the benefits of owning (or developing content for) an iPhone. After all the device features are becoming less important over time whereas services and content is increasingly driving consumer demand in the smartphone (as opposed to the feature phone) market.

Smartphone technology paves the way for the market to adopt greener approaches. Encouraging greater use of mobile services helps to limit the need for multiple devices, extend the product lifecycle and offer consumers more ways of being green.

“Technology companies can never be green”. A casual comment dropped into conversation when discussing the idea of ‘green technology’. Of course, ‘green technology’ already exists in the form of multi-million pound, global scale projects that help reclaim water, produce renewable energy and generally help meet global climate change targets. Green technology, as it stands, does not mean the ‘greening’ of technology.

The launch of the Wholesale Applications Community is potentially a substantial challenge from network operators to the dominance of Apple. Managing consumer demand and the consumer experience are likely to be key.

Recent news that 24 leading network operators are launching The Wholesale Applications Community, a mobile apps store which aims to make it easier for developers to build and sell apps “irrespective of device or technology”, begs the question of how consumers will respond.

It’s certainly a tough market for network operators with recent research by GfK Technology showing handset manufacturers dominating the apps market and indeed, a recent report by Gartner gives the somewhat startling statistic that Apple is responsible for 99.4% of mobile apps sales in 2009.

The four key factors that GfK Technology consider to be critical in driving the potential success of this sort of store are:

We often seem to think that the Apple App Store has a dominant market position for mobile devices helped in no small part by the extensive press coverage it seems to attract. Recent research by GfK Technology (1,000 online interviews conducted in Jan 2010) suggests, however, that the apps store market is in reality more varied with a wide range of stores competing for business.

The Apple Apps Store does indeed lead the market but with 39% of consumers (that downloaded an application for their mobile device in the last 3 months) using it rather than a convincing majority. That’s not to say that they are better than other stores at extracting money from consumers or encouraging repeat visits but in terms of where individuals do their mobile apps shopping, they still have some way to go before taking the majority of the market.

Mobile devices continue to be a significant advertising channel according to recent research GfK Technology recently undertook in the UK.  The proportion of consumers who had received some form of mobile advertising stood at 47%, fairly consistent with the findings from Q2 ’09.  The big shift is perhaps the growth of iPhone as a staggering 84% of iPhone users say they have seen mobile advertising in the last 3 months vs. 45% of all other mobile phone users.

SMS continues to be the dominant form of mobile advertising with 38% of UK consumers receiving at least one in the last quarter.  It’s therefore not surprising that network operators are putting significant investment into this area with O2 launching their SMS marketing service, More, in December and Orange partnering a trial with Blyk mid ’09.

Despite the continuing efforts of manufacturers, it seems that we the consumer are still not recycling our old mobile phones.  Research by GfK NOP way back in 2007 first highlighted the problem of consumer lethargy but since then recent reports suggest there has been little improvement since.

An article by Telephony online for example, bemoans that:

“when a mobile phone reaches its end of life or, more likely, a consumer opts to upgrade, the three most common places for it to end up are a landfill, an incinerator or the consumer’s desk drawer.  Nokia’s own studies find that only about 3% of consumers are recycling their handsets today …there could be as many as one billion sitting in desks, consumers  aren’t spending the time or effort to seek out a recycling program.”