China: Guangdong Mobile Sends 30 Million Warning Texts for Typhoon

Wow! 30 millions warning texts were sent as reminders to the subscribers to be extra careful about the storm, allowing the people to take precaution steps. At least it increases the awareness of the citizens though the storm can't be stopped.

As China’s southeast deals with the aftermath of tropical storm/typhoon Vicente, Guangdong Mobile (the local division of China Mobile) has revealed that it sent 30 million warning texts about the storm to subscribers in five cities, in cooperation with the provincial government. Mobile users in Shenzhen, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, and Yunfu received reminders to be careful from the telecom company because those five cities were forecast to be most affected by the storm.

The news comes as Beijing’s government is being asked awkward questions about why it didn’t cooperate with telecom operators to warn mobile users about this past Saturday’s deadly rainstorm, which led to nearly forty deaths in the capital (and allegations that the real death toll might be much higher). As we reported yesterday, Beijing’s Meteorological Bureau claims it would have been impossible to send text message warnings to Beijing’s 20 million residents because its mass texting system is far too slow.

But China’s telecoms say that if the government had authorized them to send warning texts, there would have been no technological issues. All three major telecom providers in Beijing —China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom — have now announced publicly that they would have no technical problems sending warning text messages to their entire networks within a short period of time. However, as China Telecom said yesterday, the companies are not legally permitted to send messages like that without the authorization of the relevant government organs.

The Guangdong government’s successful cooperation with its local telecoms just days after Beijing’s rainpocalypse certainly throws the Beijing government’s failure to do into sharp relief, coming as it does while families are still burying victims of the storm and many Beijing denizens are dealing with severe damage to their homes and property. The rain, of course, was going to cause damage and take lives whether text messages were sent or not. But how many lives might have been saved? How many ruined cars might have been moved to higher ground?

Source: By C. Custer on 24 July 2012.

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Four Mobile Marketing Trends That Spell “Opportunity”

For small businesses that are weighing the value of a mobile marketing or mobile commerce program, a recent infographic on mobile trends from Outsystems® is packed with helpful insights.

The infographic highlights four mobile trends that small businesses will want to take advantage of:

1. The mobile boom is here and now. According to the infographic, there are 5.3 billion global mobile subscribers, representing 3 out of 4 people on the planet. By comparison, worldwide internet use in 2011 was only 2.3 billion. With more than double the adoption rate, mobile presents a huge opportunity for small businesses to reach potential customers.

2. To attract more local customers you need to optimize your web presence for mobile search. Web searches on smart phones have become much more common, quadrupling in number in 2011. Thirty percent of all restaurant searches are now performed on mobile devices, as are 17% of auto searches and 16% of consumer electronics searches. Mobile search has become critical for reaching customers who are nearby and ready to buy.

3. B2B customers are waiting for you to go mobile. Seventy-two percent of the U.S. workforce are using mobile phones, and nearly 95% of those are using smart phones. This highlights the important of optimizing your website and marketing programs for the mobile experience.

4. Mobile apps help customers buy from you. Confirming what we saw in a recent success story on B2C mobile apps, the infographic tells us that B2B customers are eager for apps as well. Seventy-five percent of B2B decision makers said that mobile apps increase productivity, and almost two-thirds said that apps enable faster decision-making. This is another clear indication that customers are ready for small businesses to join them in the mobile space.

How will you take advantage of these mobile trends in your marketing program?

Source: By Rohan Gandhi on 13th July 2012.

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US: SMS usage remains strong in the US: 6 billion SMS messages are sent each day

Have you ever calculated how many SMS messages do you send per day? 10? 50? more than 100? In fact, it's nothing shocking and this is why it makes SMS marketing is so popular nowadays and also the coming years.

In two recently published forecasts — the Forrester Research Mobile Media Application Spending Forecast, 2012 To 2017 (EU-7) and the Forrester Research Mobile Media Application Spending Forecast, 2012 To 2017 (US) — we looked at mobile and tablet content usage for games, music, video, and messaging across the US and seven countries in Western Europe. As content availability becomes more synonymous with handset choice, the forecast helps us understand the proportion of mobile commerce that we can attribute to those who use and pay for digital content.

Even with the increased use of instant messaging, SMS remains the workhorse of mobile — with a 14% increase in the number of SMS messages sent in 2011 compared with 2010. More than 2 trillion SMS messages were sent in the US in 2011, which equates to more than 6 billion SMS messages sent per day. Text messaging users send or receive an average of 35 messages per day. Although by 2017 SMS will dominate mobile content spend less than it does today, it will still remain significant.

SMS messages allow quick, direct communication that works on all types of phone. In addition, US adults are more than twice as likely to have adopted SMS as any other form of mobile messaging, such as email, MMS, or instant messaging. With more than 80% of the US population owning a mobile phone and with almost 70% of these phone owners regularly sending or receiving text messages, SMS will remain a significant part of the mobile landscape for the foreseeable future.

Source: By Michael O'Grady on 19th June 2012.

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