How successful is Apple Pay to date? Is Snapchat turning in to a video platform? What are the latest forecasts for mobile games in India?
You’ll find the answers to these and many more mobile data related questions in this week’s MEF market stats round up…
21 per cent of people with access to Apple Pay have used it
The vast majority of iPhone users that can run Apple Pay haven’t yet done so, says a new report by Trustev. And the number is slightly worse for Samsung Pay.
Trustev polled 2,000 smartphone owners and found of those who could use Apple Pay, only 21 per cent had tried it. The Samsung Pay number is 14 per cent.
It represents a pretty slow start, and will add fuel to the argument that both services do little to improve on a card transaction in-store. Among those who do make mobile payments, here is the breakdown of usage.
Apple Pay
- 56 per cent: Once a week
- 16 per cent: 2-3 times a week
- 8 per cent: 4-10 times a week
- 2 per cent: 11-20 times a week
- 2 per cent: 20 times or more per week
Samsung Pay
- 36 per cent: Once a week
- 11 per cent: 2-3 times a week
- 5 per cent: 4-10 times a week
- 1 per cent: 11-20 times a week
- 9 per cent: 20 times or more per week
“What we’re seeing from this research is that adoption of these contactless payment schemes is still very early,” Rurik Bradbury, chief marketing officer at Trustev, told NFC World.
“Even though they are much more secure and would help to prevent fraud, consumers don’t seem to have a pain point when it comes to paying with a credit card. Old payment habits die hard.”
Read more…
Mobile accessory market to reach $81.5 billion in 2015
15 years ago, it was Nokia fascias, then it was Bluetooth headsets, now it’s iPhone cases. Fashions change, but people keep on buying accessories for their phones.
ABI Research says global revenues for mobile accessories will hit $81.5 billion this year and will grow to $101 billion by 2020. Protective carry cases are the fastest growing category, followed by chargers, screen protectors and headsets.
The most margin appears to be in headsets since consumers feel more comfortable making large investments in earphones. Witness those $250 Beats units. New tech like noise cancelling helps too.
“The thinness and lightness of a smartphone makes a protective case a necessity, and new features with cases, such as wireless charging and digital payment, will likewise drive the protective cases market,” says Marina Lu, Research Analyst at ABI Research.
The report says Asia-Pacific will account for 52.9 per cent of all mobile accessories shipments.
Read more…
Snapchat now hosting 6 billion videos a day
There’s no let up in the rise of the self-destructing message app Snapchat: it says videos on its the app are now being viewed over six billion times every day.
To put that into perspective, it was serving two billion views as recently as May. The company confirmed the six billion figure to The Financial Times.
Some think Snapchat is an unlikely social media success. Its original product let people send pics and videos that expired after one viewing. That’s still the core offer, but the firm keeps adding new options.
The big one is SnapChat stories, which lets user record a longer form video that stays live for 24 hours and which can be viewed by any follower not just a single recipient. SnapChat has sold this function aggressively to corporate and media brands.
Recently it beefed up the video options too, giving users the chance to add animated overlays, or offer videos that play in slo-mo or backwards.
Read more…
78 per cent of Facebook’s advertising revenue comes from mobile
Just a few years ago, Facebook was nowhere in mobile. Now, it’s whole business depends on it.
New quarterly numbers from the social network show mobile ads alone accounted for $3.35bn of the total $4.29bn ad revenue. In fact, the company made more money on mobile advertising alone in one quarter than the whole business took in during the same period last year.
It may be helped in future by the fact that ads inside Facebook walled garden cannot be impeded by the ad-blockers which are now available on iPhone devices.
Overall, Facebook now averages 1.1 billion users a day having passed the one billion mark in August. It’s helped by the firm’s other platforms such as Instagram with 400 million monthly active users, and WhatsApp with 900 million.
“We had a good quarter and got a lot done,” said Zuckerberg in a statement to shareholders. “We’re focused on innovating and investing for the long term to serve our community and connect the entire world.”
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South East Asia on target for $2.4 billion games market by 2019
The rise of mobile is powering the market for video gaming across South East Asia. A new report by Niko Partners says the number of people playing mobile games should double those playing PC games in the region by 2019.
This surge will lead to 400 million people playing mobile games, against 148 million playing on computers. However, the
survey of 8,400 players across six Southeast Asian countries did reveal that the PC will still deliver more revenue: $1.3 billion versus $1.1 billion for mobile.
Read more…
Indian mobile gaming market set to grow 50 per cent a year
Up to 50 million Indians currently play games on their phones, driving a market worth $150 million across all revenue models.
So says a new report from market watcher NASSCOM. And it says the market will keep growing on the back of smartphone ownership that will rise by 100 million every year.
All of this is fuelling a healthy domestic content creation market too. The report says the industry now comprises over 200 games development studios and service providers.
More than half were established from 2012 onwards and 57 per cent have fewer than 10 employees. 96 per cent of developers work on mobile games, with 61 per cent focusing on free-to-play titles