More mobile than ever
Jinfo Blog

By Nancy Davis Kho

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As anyone with a teen in the house can attest, their ability to text seems like a natural-born gift, as instinctive as breathing. A new study from Nielson quantifies it: according to a Q3 2011 study which analysed monthly mobile phone bills for teens aged 13-17, American teens have tripled their data usage just in the past 12 months. Teen boys took in 382 MB of data per month on their mobile devices, and girls used 266 MB on average.

The full report, State of the Media: Mobile Media Report Q3 2011 is available to download as a white paper here. Texting remains the most frequent mobile communications activity, with the average American teen sending an average of seven message per hour that they are awake to type. Beyond that, mobile internet access, interacting with social networks, emails, and apps make up the remaining usage.

Elsewhere in the study, Nielson found that the majority of 25-34 and 18-24 year olds now own smartphones (64% and 53% respectively). This is very much in line with statistics from Gartner Group from November 2011, which found smartphone sales to end users reached 115 million units in the third quarter of 2011. That was an increase of 42% from Q3 2010. Many industry observers expect smartphones to represent the majority of mobile devices in service before we ring out 2012.

In the Nielson study, I was struck by the reason teens cited their preference for texting over voice calls – an activity that continues to decline in importance as a component of mobile device usage. 22% of teens preferred texting because it is faster, another 21% said it was easier, and 18% said it was "more fun" than talking on the phone.

Concerns about the ability of today's teens to carry on face to face business discussions someday left aside, the study is eye-opening as a signal of how tomorrow's employees will prefer to receive and send information, even in – especially in? – the workplace. Asking for information delivery to be faster and easier – that's never a bad instinct from an employee. The question is whether vendors are doing all they can to provide it that way.

As the year progresses, we'll be looking at products with new mobile delivery options to evaluate how they hit the benchmarks of faster, easier, and even – "more fun." Do you have any mobile products you'd like to see us dive into? Comment here, or feel free to email me directly at nancy.daviskho@freepint.com.

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