After having gone through the mammoth new digital outlook for 2008 from digital gurus Avenue A | Razorfish, I was not only surprised at the amount of insight that I found tucked away among their various analyses, but equally surprised at the lightweight content in the section "Mobile Web" that focused on the mobile web in Japan. A note to the editors: Japan's mobile web is not about teens anymore.
Although generic numbers such as the "mobile commerce market exceeded $10bn in 2007" and "the mobile advertising market [...] amounted to over $500m" give a good idea of the scale of the commercial mobile industry, focusing on companies such as Mixi and Mobagetown gives a simplistic view with companies that have been in the public eye for several years now.
As opposed to a thumb-click-based analysis of mobile usage, what should be posted are demographics for dispensable mobile income based on age range. Naviblog studies clearly show that while younger consumers' dispensable mobile income is low and sporadic (even if usage volumes are high), middle-aged female consumers dominate the growth of the mobile industry market by both being big spenders on mobile purchases, becoming repeat consumers of mobile properties they value, and being highly sensitive of cross-media marketing incentives from the TV and PCweb channels.
Examples raised such as Mobagetown, one of the hot traffic media properties, is widely recognised on both the user and the advertiser side to generate traffic for the site, but not generate enough relevant brand loyalty to the advertiser, nor enough relevant content to the user. It is a traffic machine, but does that provide a more reliable and addictive source of information?
One of the big issues now is that younger people, myself included, are shunning traditional media like TV, read free magazines only to catch up on the latest or to collect "good deals" such as free coupons, and check social networks on new channels such as the mobile and realtime web to catch up with their friends. Older consumers are much more TV- and paper-centric, but are also fired up by influences from other newer channels. This means a wealth of possibilities for middle-aged users with the means to buy, and a dearth of relevant channels for younger users with less means and confidence to buy due to an ever-increasing part-timer labor force.
How many young people, teens even less so, are clicking on banner ads and google adwords and the like? Why should they? What is the universal media that they can trust and get information from? Is there one? Will there ever be one? Are young people going to continue splitting their 10-second mindspans while scavenging for reliable, relevant and valuable information among the many channels and portals available?
The mobile web is still growing up in Japan, but it has been nearly 10 years since the mobile started up in Japan, and the youth of the day have become salarymen and housewives and contributors to the economy. They are the bellwether of the mobile services industry as an economic market.
As a social marketplace of habits, trends and preferences, the current youth generation are definitely a good raincheck for what the mobile services industry market will look like in 5 years time... and their divergence from other less industry-matured mobile youths worldwide is steadily decreasing.
