It is no secret that mobile phones are attractive to advertisers and marketers. BusinessWeek and visiongain projected in March 2006 that US mobile advertising and marketing spending will increase rapidly from 2005, reaching $602.3 million in 2009.
Moreover, mobile phones have achieved mass adoption in the US, to put it mildly. eMarketer projects that 296.8 million Americans will have a mobile phone by the end of 2010, up from 207.9 million in 2005. This represents over 95% of the country's population.
Wireless services are, unsurprisingly, a huge business. Mobile phone subscribers in the US delivered $118.6 billion in revenue in 2005, according to data from the Telecommunications Industry Association published in March 2006.
So how do you reach this audience? Which non-voice applications should marketers use?
The answer, of course, is not simple. However, the numbers do point to one strong candidate right now: Text messaging ("texting") is currently the largest single component of non-voice mobile spending, and the "text to" call to action is understandably becoming increasingly common.
Market research firm Yankee Group, which in May 2005 projected more bearish mobile data revenue for 2009 than eMarketer, nevertheless also views text messaging as the leading non-voice moneymaker.
For more information and analysis on non-voice mobile spending in the US, read eMarketer's recent Mobile Spending: US Non-Voice Services report.