Scanbuy released the inaugural Mobile Barcode Trend Report. This periodic report examines the quickly growing space of mobile barcodes to provide a deeper understanding of overall trends, location of engagements, user demographics, and more.

The first of its kind report shows rapid growth in mobile barcode scanning in recent months and reflects an accelerated adoption of smartphone technology. Some of the key stats highlighted in the report include:
•Barcode scanning through the ScanLife Platform is up 700% from the start of 2010
•Starting in July, there are more scans in a single month than all of 2009 combined
•Users are scanning both 1D and 2D barcode formats equally showing that people are less concerned with code format, and more interested in getting information quickly
•People are scanning a wide variety of product UPC codes, not only from the consumer electronics category
•Users are diverse from all age groups which shows a broad range of interest

Lightspeed Research's 2008 study of mobile shopping behaviour.

THE MOBILE ADVERTISING ECOSYSTEM

This whitepaper aims to deliver a high level overview about the mobile advertising ecosystem. It describes the different segments of the mobile advertising market as well as provides some insights on the different players and processes of the mobile advertising value chain.

The main conclusion of the whitepaper is, that the mobile advertising ecosystem has a high rate of fragmentation and diversification. On one hand the ecosystem is fragmented on a technological level since there are many devices with different operating systems and handsets on the market. On the other hand the market suffers from the very limited amount of marketing budgets in a specific geographical region. This massive fragmentation results in serious market inefficiencies that hinder advertisers to achieve campaign goals and publishers to properly monetize content.

Please download the whitepaper here

Millennial Media’s May 2010 Mobile Mix™ includes a new section on Mobile Developer Trends, featuring a snapshot of U.S. developer platform usage and the top mobile app channels.

Highlights from May’s Mobile Mix™:

• Gaming, Social Networking, and Weather apps placed in the top three positions on our Top Mobile App Channels, ranked by revenue in May.
• RIM remained the second largest OS on our network for the tenth consecutive month.
• Android ad requests grew 15% month-over-month. Since January, Android has grown 338%.
• iPad ad requests grew 160% month-over-month.
• Feature Phones increased 4%, taking some of the impression share from Connected Devices.

The full Mobile Mix™ report continues to track and report monthly mobile device trends for connected devices, mobile manufacturers and operating systems.

April Mobile Mix Highlights:

• Android ad requests grew 77% month over month. Since January, Android has grown 282%.
• RIM remained the second largest OS on our network for the ninth consecutive month with a 3% increase month-over-month and a 17% share of impressions.
• Although the Apple OS had a month-over-month decrease of 8% it still remained the leading OS on our network in April with 62% share of Smartphone impressions.
• Android Smartphone manufacturer, HTC, entered the top five this month for the first time and represented the largest increase within the Top 15 Manufacturers in April with a 2.5% impression share increase month-over-month.
• The Touch & QWERTY category experienced the largest amount of growth within the Device Input Mix and represented approximately 8% of our network’s impressions in April.

The full report is available here

These documents list the titles of all the currently available or forthcoming MMA Mobile Consumer Briefings for the US and EMEA (UK, France, and Germany).

Millennial Media’s March 2010 U.S. Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (SMART)™ Report is available here:

To download and sign up for future reports,including Millennial Media's device report, the Mobile Mix, visit: http://www.millennialmedia.com/research/

Millennial Media’s Mobile Mix™ tracks and reports monthly mobile device trends. Based on Millennial Media’s network data the Mobile Mix highlights monthly trends for connected devices, mobile manufacturers, and operating systems. This report complements Millennial Media’s monthly Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (S.M.A.R.T.™), which focuses on mobile advertising insights. Mobile Mix includes: Top 15 Manufacturers; Top 20 Mobile Phones; Device Input Mix; U.S. Carrier Mix; U.S. Smartphone, Feature Phone & Connected Device Share; U.S. Smartphone OS Mix; Device & OS Quick Stats.

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The growth in Smartphone use in the US is fuelling a range of new consumer behaviors and expectations and advertisers want to know what this means for them.  But with such limited industry knowledge about consumers’ mobile advertising behaviors and expectations, it is currently difficult for advertisers to commit media budget to this platform. Microsoft Advertising commissioned research to understand mobile media consumption and advertiser opportunities among U.S. Smartphone and iPhone users, across 10 different verticals. 

Data Innovation, Inc. conducted baseline research to understand the penetration of mobile financial services and uses of those services among smart phone users. The unique differentiation of our approach is that all of our research is conducted on mobile handsets. All respondents are validated and cannot participate if they do not use a smart phone. Response rates to Data Innovation surveys have been above 40%. Baseline data was collected in December 2009.

Financial institutions report that smart phone users are driving adoption, and the Data Innovation Mobile Money Study confirms this fact. In our survey, 246 smart phone users completed a mobile questionnaire (on their handsets) on the topic of mobile financial services. The study found that nearly 70% of respondents had used some type of mobile banking and/or payment service in the past three months.

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