Zokem’s industry leading Mobile Life panel in the US from the year 2010 reveals that iPhone scores 84% higher in loyalty ratings than the nearest competitor, Google Android. Among non-iPhone users, the number one preference for the next smartphone is iPhone. The benchmark results by Zokem also show that older Windows Mobile devices and Nokia’s Symbian devices have already lost the game in the US. Both Microsoft and Nokia are, however, coming back with new offerings and trying to challenge the top three platforms – iPhone, Android and Blackberry – when measured by user loyalty.

During the year 2010 Android emerged as the single best selling mobile platform in the US. Out of individual device types, however, the few iPhone models that are available on the market are actually selling more than any specific Android device, and for the time being, Apple’s well-controlled ecosystem, including the iTunes app store and traditionally higher revenues per device, seem to make an unmatched combination. As a platform, however, Android is a fair competitor –and in certain numbers, bigger than iPhone – but the industry attention is still geared towards the iPhone as the leading smartphone platform, particularly in the US.
Zokem, a mobile analytics company focused on smartphones, is running mobile consumer panels in all major markets. The panels do not only measure what people do with mobile phones, but also track how loyal people are towards different phone models and carriers.

From the 2010 summary report that was published recently, a few figures are worth pointing out. First of all, “the figures suggest clearly that iPhone is the top performing platform in terms of user loyalty, and therefore, it is an increasingly likely pick for a repurchase” tells Dr. Hannu Verkasalo, CEO of Zokem. “Android is a good number two in the US market, even though the loyalty score is not nearly as high as it is for iPhones, but it seems that people who are using Android are also very likely to buy an Android-based device as their next smartphone too”, Verkasalo continues. Zokem is using a standardized net promoter score (NPS) to analyze user loyalty.

Figure 1.

Figure 1 reflects the loyalty that mobile users have for the phones that they are currently using. Net promoter score between -100 % and 100 %, is measuring the loyalty that people have towards the phone. Generically NPS score higher than 60 % is considered good. The only smartphone platform that exceeds that is iPhone, at 73 %. Google’s Android platform comes second, followed by Samsung’s Bada-based phones (Samsung has now shifted strategy more towards Android-based devices) and then RIM’s Blackberry phones. It is notable that two remarkable players, Nokia and Microsoft, received very low loyalty ratings for their own platforms. Also Palm’s Webos, sold to HP during year 2010, did not achieve a very high NPS score.

Figure 2.

Low loyalty correlates with higher churn, meaning the likelihood to shift to a competing platform during the next 12 months, as seen in Figure 2. There are, however, certain exceptions, like Samsung Bada, Palm WebOS, and Nokia Symbian S60. These platforms have suffered from lack of mass adoption, weak app stores, and relatively moderate push by US carriers. “Even though Samsung Bada, for example, received relatively good loyalty rating, most users were still committed to jump to one of the better known platforms, and therefore the churn for Bada was very high”, says Zhao Hanbo from the Zokem analyst team.

Figure 3

Figure 3 reflects some key correlations, underlining the fact that users of iPhones, Blackberries and Android devices are all more likely to buy a similar device in the future, rather than to change to a competing platform. The results are quite contrasting regarding Palm and Nokia phones, reflecting the fact that the weak platforms of today might be even weaker in the future.

A recent study by Zokem reveals that the use of apps and mobile web goes up in relative terms in the evening and night time, whereas traditional communication services capture more user attention in the day time. For advertisers, this indicates the most important venues for mobile advertising during the lucrative evening time, where apps are, in fact, already ahead of web.

In the future of mobile, advertising will play an increasingly important part of the whole ecosystem. There exists a great opportunity in understanding how to target ads, when and where to advertise, and to whom. An interesting fact is that mobile is everywhere and all the time, so the possible contexts where to advertise and engage with consumers are numerous. As there are various ways to deliver ads through mobiles, choosing the best channel, such as the mobile web versus an application, the right app category or ad network, for the right time of a day have to be decided.

Figure 1

In Figure 1, based on our international Mobile Life panel, we have compared the relative use of smartphones at different parts of the day, calculating for each of the main smartphone use cases (browsing, voice, messaging and apps) an index reflecting the likelihood for people to use them, or launch the application, given they actually do something with their phones during that particular hour. For this we compare the number of usage sessions per category to the total number all usage sessions in a particular hour.

As expected, voice and messaging dominate day time usage, but fall towards the night as people communicate less through calls and messaging in the night time. Voice drops quicker than messaging, perhaps because it is a more business oriented service. In absolute terms, day time usage is still higher than evening time usage for all categories (Figure 2), but interestingly mobile apps and web browsing are stronger in the evening and night time, at least in relative terms.

Figure 2

“The evening hours are actually very crucial for advertising purposes, as people are not so much into work, and are more likely to make decisions, such as whether to go to movies, pick a nice restaurant for a dinner, or purchase a new track on iTunes”, says Dr. Hannu Verkasalo, CEO of Zokem. “If you take a closer look, it is shown that in the evenings apps still continue to capture user attention, actually more so than in day time, even though e.g. voice and messaging usage is already going down. Also mobile web browsing continues to capture user attention, even off the day time hours, but apps are relatively more important than mobile web sites for the purposes of advertising”, continues Verkasalo.

In the publicly available Zokem Insights, these analytics are packetized into more granular form, and more specific results for different application categories, sophisticated user segments, and device models, are available, providing tools for more actionable optimization of ad campaigns and targeting models.

This exemplary piece of analytics was published as a courtesy by Zokem, based on a vast dataset of smartphone users, part of Zokem Mobile Life panels, from the US and main markets of Europe.

As more companies embrace social media, the chatter about return on investment, or ROI, has amplified as executives attempt to determine whether the money they’re spending is worth it. In theory, it’s a good exercise but given it is still early days for social media, it is a challenge to accurately quantity its impact right now.

Rather than focus on ROI, companies should be looking long and hard at SMO – social media optimization.

So, what is SMO? One way to define is that SMO is a focus on making sure that a company’s social media activities are as efficient and effective as possible. It means creating content – be it blog posts, tweets, videos or Facebook updates – that can be easily used and leveraged across multiple social media platforms.

It means making sure a company’s social media person or team is highly productive so that their day-day-day activities are focused and productive as opposed to having a scattered shot-gun approach that consumes too many cycles.

Yes... and no.
I agree 100% that our work needs to be optimized. Social Media is no exception to anything else that is done in an organization and as such is not exempt of falling prey to waste and inefficient processes. There are multiple tools that can help improve this. But beyond the tools we must first look at how we are organized/structured. Does our organization's design aid or hamper our productivity?

We talk so much about relationships in social media that we forget about our internal structure and relationships.

Where do I disagree? There are still ways of measuring of ROI. Everything can be measured... everything can be tracked. It's just a matter of how we do it and how we interpret that data.