Editor’s Note: Welcome to our Monday feature, Analyst Angle. We’ve collected a group of the industry’s leading analysts to give their outlook on the hot topics in the wireless industry. In the coming weeks look for columns from Jupiter Research’s Julie Ask, Current Analysis’ Avi Greengart and iGR’s Iain Gillott.
My son is newly mobile. That is to say, he’s walking now.
There’s something bittersweet about his newfound mobility in that, while it’s nice to move from one room to another without a sack of potatoes over my shoulder, his wandering brings about much unease in the Herrmann household. Naturally, this has me thinking about the apprehension I’ll have when he’s not just roaming about our dining room, but roaming elsewhere on the mean streets of Chicago.
Luckily for me, he’ll probably have a mobile phone by the time he’s eight. Already, 35% of 8-12 year olds in the U.S. have a mobile phone, according to a study being released next week by Nielsen Mobile. When we look even more closely at mobile penetration at specific ages, we see that by the age of twelve, most U.S. tweens (56%) have a mobile phone. That is, most kids these days have phones before they’ve even started driver’s ed.
Before the birth of my son, I would have been alarmed by such figures. I admit there’s something initially disconcerting about millions of prepubescent mobile users stepping off the jungle gym to take a call on their clamshell. But lately I’m anticipating the upsides to having a connected kid.
Even before considering GPS location services such as Verizon’s Chaperone, or Sprint Family Locator that allow users to keep track of the physical whereabouts of their child, the ability for my child to text or call me whenever he needs me is an obvious improvement over the days when parents would toss the kid a quarter and hope they could find a payphone.
And while I believe it is the idea of safety and connectedness, if not convenience, that draws adults to sign on the dotted line for their kids, there are many implications of a mobile tween universe from both a cultural and a business standpoint.
A growing market
According to Nielsen Mobile, about 16% of mobile tweens access the mobile Web and about 5% say they watch TV on their phones. Though young users, like their parents, are adopting mobile media only as fast as it evolves, there is a high interest among these users for these expanded uses. For instance, 40% of tweens say they are extremely or very interested in browsing the Web from their phones.
From a cultural standpoint, what will it mean to have a generation so connected, in ubiquity, to information-from the very early days of their cultural and intellectual formation? Furthermore, what will it mean to have a segment of our population who, from the age of eight or even younger, had the ability to turn off their surroundings and escape into the depths of their portal? Armed with a mobile device, today’s tweens could grow up to be the most informationally self-reliant generation we’ve seen yet.
Beyond such cultural considerations, the growing ubiquity of tween mobile phones and acceptance of mobile media will require significant changes to how mobile services are promoted. Consider that simply having television on a phone will be neither new nor impressive to one of these children by the time they turn 18. For those who have only known this world in which mobile video and other mobile media exist, the industry may need to find new, or at least more fanciful, bells and whistles.
Of course, the carriers won’t be the only ones looking for a new pitch. Through Nielsen Mobile’s Mobile Vector service, we know that U.S. tweens and teens with video-enabled phones may watch as much as 30-40% less overall television than the average 8-17 year old. Arguably, the media companies have an even greater urgency to figure out how these young digital natives are seamlessly adopting mobile media.
Growing up connected
So it is, that while the digital universe has grown into our lives, our children will grow into a ready-made digital sphere. It would serve us all well to have a more thorough understanding of how these kids are using media today, because this will surely effect their uses, and our businesses, in the future.
While the proverbial father often reminds us of what it felt like to walk to school both ways, uphill, with a 10-pound ham on his back, I may one day have to remind my son what it felt like, in the olden days, to be disconnected.
Please e-mail Jeff at [email protected] or RCR Wireless News at [email protected].
