I wanted to comment on that 28% is not quite half – good point. I was probably not clear enough. Rubicon said more than half said they were shifting usage from laptop to iPhone. 28% said “strongly agree” and – I forget the exact number – something like 17% said “somewhat agree” – which Rubicon added together to find more than half had said they are moving their activies from laptop to iPhone.

Its not that I can’t count ha-ha..

I assumed that there was some “agree” rating that wasn’t shown.

However, if you think 28% + 17% (which is 45%) is more than half, then you really can’t count. :D You’d need 22% to get to half.

Steve

Thanks for explaining the percentages from your post at CDB and thanks for the great additional commentary. I couldn’t agree more, especially with regard to your insight on the developing world. Just take one look at any stats from the Opera Mobile/Mini press release page and you can see how it is starting to play out in locations outside of “The West”, in terms of access. It’s funny, I was just having an email conversation with some colleagues about mobile in the developing world, touching on some of the points you made. Thanks again for taking the time to respond to this post.

Thanks for mentioning my blog at Communities Dominate.

I wanted to comment on that 28% is not quite half – good point. I was probably not clear enough. Rubicon said more than half said they were shifting usage from laptop to iPhone. 28% said “strongly agree” and – I forget the exact number – something like 17% said “somewhat agree” – which Rubicon added together to find more than half had said they are moving their activies from laptop to iPhone.

Its not that I can’t count ha-ha..

While I’m here, good points in your blog commentary. A couple of quick observations to spur your readership onto more thinking.

First, everything you write about is true but with a strong slant to the industrialized world. Today the majority of all mobile phone subscriptions are in the developing world. In the industrialized world, there is a valid choice – desktop and broadband at home; laptop and WiFi at Starbucks, and the iPhone and 3G on the road. But in the developing world, there is only a modest amount of personal computers (and skills for the support of them) and far less, any reliable internet connectivity. In Africa there is so bad connectivity that often they use satellite connections – ouch, that is nastily expensive. But when the locals will literally steal the cable from the ground – for the junk metal value of the copper (not to even mention fibre optics) – you really don’t have a good infrastructure to even consider a PC based and broadband (or WiFi) based internet experience, except the few wealthy cities.

In the developing world, the ratio of mobile phone based internet access to PC based internet access ranges from 6:1 in India to as much as 10:1 in Kenya.

Seconly on the micro-consumption. Great point. A bit more to ponder. Morgan Stanley reported that now 91% of the planet keep the mobile phone within arm’s reach 24/7. Literally we take it to the bathroom with us and we literally sleep with the phone. As its our alarm clock, it is literally the last thing we look at before we go to sleep and again the first thing we see when we wake up. Whatever other media we consume – watching TV or reading the newspaper or surfing the web – for 91% of the people, the phone is within our visible range.

That means that any brand that currently uses another one-directional media (like TV, radio, newspapers, cinema, billboards etc) can now make that experience bi-directional, by making the phone the interactive channel (in fact, with 3 billion people, 76% of all mobile phone subsribers active users of SMS text messaging on the planet, that is 2.5x bigger reach than with email.. makes you think if you’re an advertiser, doesn’t it?)

And on the internet – even better – mobile phones can become the money element in interactivity, and collect payments even from those who are too young for credit cards – as many internet service providers are learning from Habbo Hotel out of Finland to Cyworld in South Korea to EA Electronic Arts in America..

There is much more on these and other topics there at my blog at http://www.communities-dominate.blogs.com and just yesterday I wrote a major blog piece about the overall size of the mobile opportunity. Some of your readers might enjoy that.

Tomi Ahonen :-)
http://www.tomiahonen.com