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What are the latest forecasts for mobile media expenditure? Should marketers be investing more in AR? What does the mobile banking opportunity really look like?

You’ll find the answers to these and many more of your mobile market questions in this week’s MEF market stats round up…

Spending on mobile media to rise $125 billion by 2021

Consumers and advertisers will shell out $425 billion on mobile entertainment, data and social in six years’ time.

A new report from Strategy Analytics examines combined expenditure for everything we do on our phones that’s not calling or messaging. In other words: mobile internet use, social networking, games, apps, music, video, ringbacks, alerts, and associated spend on mobile data.

It reckons we spend $300 billion on it now. And ‘we’ includes advertisers, who will increase their share over the period. They account for 24 per cent in 2015.

Whether the money comes from consumer or advertiser, it’s operators who stand to benefit from more data revenues.

Nitesh Patel, director of Wireless Media Strategies at Strategy Analytics, said: “The total number of mobile data subscriptions will reach 2.3 billion by the end of 2015 equating to almost half of unique mobile users. Not surprisingly, we are seeing strong growth in emerging mobile data markets, and in particular where smartphone ownership is rising fast.”

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US advertiser spend on AR set to double every year

Marketers are set to move their dollars over to augmented reality campaigns, says a new study by Wise Guy Reports.

‘Mobile Augmented Reality Market for Marketing and Advertising in the US 2015-2019’ says AR spending by US marketers will grow at a CAGR of 95.35 per cent over the period 2014 to 2019.

This includes spending on augmented reality engines, software applications and hardware.

AR, of course, lets consumers train their smartphone cameras on an object to reveal overlaid graphics, pics or even videos on the top of it. Advertisers are experimenting with AR on packaging and posters.

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68 per cent of people yet to use mobile financial services

More than two thirds of consumers have yet to use any kind of mobile money or payments product.

A study by Ovum for Amdocs of 8,500 consumers in 17 countries found that those who do use these services derive immense benefit from them, but there’s a big rump that have yet to even try them.

The proportion of ‘refuseniks’ is higher in growth markets (73 per cent) where 34 per cent of respondents in also said that they were aware of these products but had no plans to use them.

Ovum believes savings, loans, insurance and payment for medical/education will drive the next phase of growth in mobile financial services: 25 percent of respondents in growth markets said they’re likely to adopt such products in the next year, compared to 16 per cent in mature markets.

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Mobile shopping in Asia Pac up 22 per cent

Visa’s 2015 regional eCommerce monitor survey has revealed a big jump in online purchases and bill payments by mobile across the Asia region.

The study polled 11,760 respondents from 13 markets and recorded a 22 per cent increase over 2014. The biggest jumps came in Indonesia (36 per cent), China (34 per cent) and Taiwan (28 per cent).

Across the region, the gap between desktop and mobile is closing. Indeed, in Thailand, consumers are as likely to purchase using their mobile devices as through the PC.

Another trend is cross-border online shopping. Consumers from Singapore (77 per cent), Australia and Hong Kong (75 per cent) and New Zealand (74 per cent) are most likely to make online purchases from retailers overseas.

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Mobile will drive the display panel market to $156.57 billion by 2020

The market for ‘glass’ will rise by a third as consumers keep buying TVs, tablets and smartphones.

According to Markets and Markets’ report the display panels space was worth $114.16 billion in 2014, but will hit $156.57 billion in five years.

The market for large size (above 10 inch) display panels is the biggest at the moment, and will remain so thanks to tablets and hi-def TV. But demand for smaller panels will grow faster between now and 2020. That’s all thanks to mobiles, phablets, automotive, and smart watches.

The markets in Europe and North America are expected to grow at CAGRs of 7.31 per cent and 7.50 per cent, respectively between 2015 and 2020.

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Apple sets new record: 13 million new iPhones sold in a weekend

Analysts reckoned the new iPhone models offered less of an improvement than any previous upgrade, but it didn’t stop the firm setting a new first weekend record.

Last year, the iPhone 6 sold 10 million in two days. The new iPhone 6s and 6s Plus have done three million more.

This might seem a little strange given that queues were certainly down on 2014. However, there’s a simple reason for the spike: China. This was the first time China was included in first day shipping – and some reports suggested it accounted for 40 per cent of sales. Maybe this is why investors were cool on the results and the share price slipped a little.

The weekend also marked the debut of Apple’s upgrade program, giving users the chance to pay Apple a monthly fee to buy their iPhones. This could mark a major new direction for the mobile industry as a whole.

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