Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The Smartphone/Rubber Ducky Combo For That Special Someone

A soap-proof, washable phone from Kyocera has a rubber ducky stand to prop it up on. My search for the perfect holiday gift is over. Rub-a-dub-dub.

According to IBM, 27.6 % of online Cyber Monday sales were reportedly accomplished from a mobile device.

United Airlines will equip 6,000+ customer service reps with iPhones.

Expedia ran Black Friday deals in its app that sold out in 7 minutes, according to the company.

Global smartphone shipments should see their first full year of single-digit growth worldwide in 2015 after years of double-digit growth: IDC.

82% of consumers aware of IoT devices don't trust them, per Google Consumer Surveys for Auth0, an identify platform company.

Black Friday shoppers spent on average 5 hours at the mall: Foursquare.

WiFi reportedly could slow down because of your Christmas lights. My reaction? "Have yourself a @gogo like Christmas"

79% of smartphone users feel their phones make them feel productive; 57% say distracted: Pew.

I saw a promoted tweet for lab coats and scrubs. I haven't even played a doctor on TV.

Disney announced that ESPN has lost 7 million subscribers due to cord cutting.

All these years later and many businesses still don't get that you need to opt someone in to send them a marketing SMS message. There are big financial penalties for such violations. Watch for some lawsuits.

I’m not ready to rely on voice recognition in 2016. I asked for directions home via my iPhone and Siri said, "I can't go back in time". WTF?

As dumb as they may seem, I still believe selfie sticks put smiles on faces and have a place in holiday memory-making.

My 86-year-old mother-in-law came to visit armed with two flash drives. The times, they are a'changin.

Mobile drove nearly half of all paid search clicks and over half on the key Thanksgiving and Black Friday shopping days, Kenshoo reported.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - Facing A Life of Paying By Selfie

MasterCard is testing an app that lets customers pay with a selfie. Facial recognition enables the app to verify one’s identity. After registering, users would be able to pay by looking at their phone and blinking once. The blink prevents thieves from showing the app a picture of a face to get around the system.

For those uncomfortable with this, the app can read one’s fingerprint. Or, of course, one can pay with cash.

45% of smartphone owners begin with Amazon when shopping on a smartphone, according to a survey by Mizuho Securities. Google is in the runner-up slot with 16%.

But when it comes to searching for information, 34% begin with the Google search app, followed by 27% typing into the Safari browser, and 19% beginning with the Chrome browser.

An example of the need for more personalization in mobile – I received a text offer for a brown sugar bacon sandwich. Totally random.

The third quarter of 2015 begins and Gogo is still at dialup speed. I’m told by someone in the know that they raised their prices significantly to discourage usage while still making their overall business goal by gouging the poor suckers who use the crappy service.

What is one to do about an Apple Watch tan line. I’m surprised that CNN hasn’t covered this phenomenon and dubbed it Breaking News.

Matti Makkonen, considered the father of SMS, died at 63. He made an enormous contribution to mobile and to marketing. Despite proven results, text messaging is often too quickly dismissed by marketers.

To the next person who uses appsolutely - pow.

Facebook is giving marketers the option of paying for video ads after 10 seconds of viewing instead of three, per the Wall Street Journal.

A diet-based video game claims to make you thinner. Fat chance.

A man claimed that his iPhone 6 overheated, burst into flames. These stories almost always turn out to be hoaxes.

China’s Huawei introduced a phone with a dancing piece of pizza. I’m figuring that it was something about wanting a slice of the market.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - What The Latest mCommerce Numbers Tell Us

1.6% of total U.S. retail sales in the United States this year will be made directly from mobile devices, per eMarketer. Only 1.6%, you say? That translates to $76.79 billion. This behavior will become more commonplace if reports are true that Google will soon add 'buy' buttons to mobile search results.

57% of small-business owners say establishing solid relationships is key: The Alternative Board. The other 43% don’t deserve to be in business given that thinking.

74% of mobile shoppers fine with not being identified in a store: RichRelevance.

If accurate, still 26% of the shopping dollars available are huge.

Macy’s found visitors to its mobile app apply offers 20 times more than mobile web or desktop visitors.

48.1% of UK doctors plan to use health data recorded via patients’ smartphones within 5 years; 10.2% already do, according to eMarketer.

As we gauge the pace of progress in personalization, how should I answer my wife when she asks why eHarmony puts promoted tweets are in my feed?

AOL earned $606 million on dial-up subscriptions last year. Those folks would enjoy the “speed” of a Gogo inflight connection.

The first demographic in the U.S. to pass 90% penetration of smartphones? Ages 18-24, according to comScore

Future TV sets “will look like a large iPad,” with a variety of apps: Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix

Surrounded by technology last week, I was amused to see a woman in the airport reading Knit Baby Afghans print magazine.

54% of millennials stop using a brand’s products after a poor mobile experience, Oracle says.

39 of the top 50 news sites are accessed most by mobile: comScore.

59% of 16-24 year olds in the UK say that they would miss their mobile more than TV, Ofcom reported. I would’ve guessed that number to be at least 80%.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - I Appsolutely Hate Made-Up Words

I’ll continue to take my mobile innovation in product, not words. I looked it up and it has been 22 years since someone first said phablet. And we still hate it.

Along those same lines, what’s fair treatment for someone who says appsolutely? Whatever you come up with, I’ll say that you are being too kind.

Google will begin ranking mobile-friendly sites higher starting April 21. Ready?

Can't say I've ever said yes to a promoted tweet asking for a follow. What's the return on those?

60% of retailers lack the data to personalize campaigns, per Colloquy. To me, the big problem is 75% of consumers expect it.

Stopped reading a headline that started Gogo Wi-Fi Gets More Expensive. Happened about a month after I stopped using the slower than you-know-what service.

What we knew to be true about Apple Pay – heavier users at JP Morgan Chase are younger and wealthier.

68% of ad requests included location data in 2014, up 58% since 2012 – Thinknear.

Spread ‘em. Apple Watch advertising covers 12 pages in Vogue. Supposedly cost $2.2 million.

In arguably the most connected city, San Francisco International Airport’s announcements are the loudest.  It’s smartphone notification followed by screaming. Stop it.

Groupon launches 10-15 experiments for each mobile release, and uses rigorous A/B testing model to help evolve the app: VentureBeat.

Smartphone penetration has increased to 75% in the United States. Roughly 95% of the devices sold are smartphones, per industry analyst Chetan Sharma.

24% of US shoppers scan bar codes or QR codes –GfK. Brands don't spend against this number and likely doubt that it's true.

One-third of B2B sales/marketing professionals say they've automated less than 25% of their processes, according to eMarketer.

The number of malicious mobile programs exceeded 12 million in Q4 2014: Kaspersky. And few one noticed or cared.

In a related note from Symantec: 57% of employees worldwide access corporate data in some form on a personal mobile device.

9 in 10 U.S. households had a landline phone in 2004. Now it's 53%, per CDC.

Those in the U.K. aged 16 to 24 years use their mobile device nearly four hours a day: The Economist.

Notes From A Mobilized Marketer - The Pre-CES Edition

As I head to CES, I wonder whether 2013 be the year of "reinvented" TV or was that 2012 with second-screen adoption?

Consumer Reports calls the iPhone 5 the worst of the top smartphones. I don't know many unhappy users. Do you?

Next-generation LTE chips are said to reduce power consumption by 50 percent. Will that lead to 50 percent more activity and the status quo?

The dumbphone may be added to Oxford English Dictionary – but not by marketers. We would never call users dumb, right?

Facebook mobile user counts revealed: 192 million Android, 147 million iPhone, 48 million iPad, 56 million Messenger.

In 2012, mobile search and display advertising was up 220 percent in the U.S. alone, according to eMarketer. Google had a 56.6 percent share of the overall US mobile advertising market. The nearest competitor, Facebook, had an 8.8 percent share.

Texting activity went up and game playing went down on mobile in the latest comScore look.

Want an easy way to lose me? Run a headline that says a company "may" do something. I may move to Tahiti. Maybe not.

Apple stock was up 31 percent in 2012. Failure?

We couldn't end 2012 without another "gadget caught fire" story. Historically, many are hoaxes that media chase anyway.

There will be more and faster Internet connections on planes if the Federal Communications Commission gets its way. With an option, many of us will go-go from Gogo.

New York introduced real-time arrival times for subway trains via mobile apps. It can handle 5,000 queries per second.

Smartphone activations typically outpace tablets by four to one, yet more tablets were activated on Christmasm according to Flurry.