Tag Archives: minoroty mobile web access

Minority Smartphone Ownership & Internet Access: The Trends Strengthen

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In a guest Wall Street Journal op-ed Monday, Lucy Hood, executive director of the Institute for Communication Technology Management at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, discussed the impact of smartphones and pre-paid or no-contract mobile plans on minority access to the Internet.

Citing recent Pew and USC’s Institute for Communication Technology Management studies, a clear trend continues to show that 60% of Latino, and Black smartphone users access the Internet through their phones.

In 2010, prepaid plans accounted for 10% of the $160 billion in revenues generated by the mobile-phone market… — Lucy Hood

Some Additional Statistics:

  • 26% of whites own smartphones while 37% of black and fully 46% of Latinos are owners
  • In the past year, new pre-paid subscribers increased at a rate double of traditional plan users, 6.9 million vs 3.6 million
  • Buying things with a smartphone, mobile commerce or “m-commerce” is 50% higher amongst black and Latinos

Our Thoughts
These trends are eye-opening in that they show who consumer segments utilizing a mobile device instead of a traditional desktop or laptop PC. Clearly the availability of lost-cost, subsidized plans and an ever-widening selection of smartphones, primarily Android-powered, is making a big difference. These communities are becoming the leaders in mobile web consumption.

Questions
How this affects your clients and their marketing efforts is worth considering. For example, with this user demographic, what is the role of a traditional desktop-formatted website? Is it the primary or secondary information source? What obligations do local, state and federal web sites have to ensure the minority community is served with accessible content if there is no PC involved?

These are important questions and ones that should be discussed today. In a very short time, certainly by 2015, nearly all Americans who want a smartphone will have one and the primary method of Internet access will have decisively shifted to mobile.

 

Cultural Impacts of Smartphone as Primary Internet Device

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Pew Internet & American Life ProjectThe Pew Internet & Life Project, led by Senior Research Specialist Aaron Smith, did very interesting work last year with their research into just how mobile devices are used and by whom. So much in our industry is focused on technology, features and operating system share that we forget that there are some important underlying trends that are emerging amongst users in America. Smith highlighted three trends:

  • Trend #1: The internet and broadband populations have become more diverse over the last decade, although key disparities do remain
  • Trend #2: Access to the digital world is increasingly being untethered from the desktop, and this is especially true for people of color
  • Trend #3: Minority internet users don’t just use the social web at higher rates, their attitudes towards these tools differ as well

The most important takeaway is that minority communities, Latino and African Americans, are using mobile devices in a different manner from most other cultural groups. One of the most striking findings of the Pew study is that many within these minority communities may access the Internet overwhelmingly through mobile devices. 51% of Hispanics and 46% of African Americans use their mobile devices to access the Internet, compared with 33% of whites.

The data indicate that these groups don’t necessarily have PC alternatives for Internet use. This makes some sense when we look at the typical subsidized purchase models that mobile carriers offer, models which are generally not available for traditional PCs. Also couple the cost of residential Internet access and the overall expense of a PC and Internet capabilities may move out of reach.

Smith, the Pew researcher, says more research is needed to understand the implications of blacks and Latinos moving so quickly to mobile Web access, because this technology is changing the patterns of Internet use as profoundly as the shift from dial-up to broadband did over the past decade.

– “For Minorities, A New Digital Divide Seen”, Jesse Washington, Associated Press, USAToday, 1/10/2011

So what is the impact for businesses and organizations? Once again, the critical need to serve a mobile-optimized website is made clear. If you are presenting only a desktop sized website, you may well be under-serving a potential market segment or if in the public sphere (government, education or healthcare) not meeting the needs of members of the community.

The shift in Internet access, “untethered from the desktop” is creating a gap for the delivery of important content and capabilities to an ever-increasing set of people. The time for marketers to address this for their customers or for business owners to get a mobile website is now.