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Across industries, Compete is seeing more and more consumers research their purchases online.  However, online research doesn’t have to mean sitting at a computer.  With the phenomenal success of the Apple iPhone, moves by other manufacturers to enable a more user-friendly web browsing experience, and the increasing availability of applications on a number of devices and platforms, mobile phones are poised to become another avenue of online research for offline shopping.  

As behaviors change, understanding the impact of these devices is important for brands across all industries, not just wireless.  The iPhone has raised the bar in terms of mobile web use and adoption of newly-mobile applications and functions, and feedback from owners suggests that the sleek UI and ease of use helps to feed this behavior.   As other devices emulate and improve upon the iPhone, we expect to see these trends manifest themselves with users of other smartphones in the years ahead.  

Smartphone interest is growing

In Q1 2009, smartphones continued to capture share of shopper interest on the Big-4 Carrier (wireless provider) sites, increasing 32% over this time last year.   

Consumers are looking for devices that do more than just make calls and send a text message.  They want a device that also plays music, gives turn-by-turn navigation, and provides a way to search for local businesses. Mobile devices are becoming increasingly important in consumers lives and offer an additional access point for b2c messaging and advertising.  Let’s dive deeper into one of those industries.

iPhones owners are banking from their phones

In Q1 2009, Compete surveyed smartphone owners to understand their attitudes and behaviors around mobile banking.   To determine if the iPhone owners’ behaviors differed from the rest, we analyzed their responses separately.

• Phone owners are 1.8x more likely to check their account balance on their mobile device
• iPhone owners are 2.2x more likely to use their mobile device to trade stocks
• iPhone owners are less likely to say they don’t utilize their mobile device to manage their finances (36%) than other smartphone owners (67%)

The adoption of applications may be driving a lot of this momentum on the iPhone.  Nearly all (98%) iPhone owners admit to downloading applications to their device after it comes out of the box.  Drilling down to the category level, Compete found that 32% of iPhone owners who have downloaded apps recall selecting finance related applications.