BII MOBILE INSIGHTS: Mobile Is The Future Of Retail

Mobile Insights is a daily newsletter from BI Intelligence delivered first thing every morning exclusively to BI Intelligence subscribers. Sign up for a free trial of BI Intelligence today.

---

Mobile Is The Future Of Retail, But It Won't Come Fast (Publishers Weekly)
At a panel called Retail Is Going Mobile, which took place at SXSW Interactive over the weekend, all the panelists agreed: retailers are behind in mobile. This means that for all the possibilities, change will likely come slowly. Getting mobile to sync with existing modes of doing business is tricky. So what's ahead? Mobile retailing apps that use our personal information to improve and personalize the in-store experience. For example: they may alert a customer to how many pairs of shoes are in stock in their size when they enter the shoe store. Read >>

Mobile Payments And Mobile Advertising Have A Promising Future Together (Huffington Post)
Progress in both mobile payments and mobile advertising is leading to an inevitable and inextricable fusion. Dan Meyers, owner of a third-generation dry cleaning service in Hobart, Indiana, is looking forward to that development. "We chucked our old cash register last year and now use a mobile POS solution from PayAnywhere," he explains. "Consumers like the convenience and security of paying with a quick swipe when we deliver to their door." In addition to his optimism for mobile payments, Tetherton is excited about the potential of mobile advertising. Read >>

Stepping Up To The Challenge Of Mobile Ad Monetization (Mobile Marketer)
The most notable change in comScore’s recent MediaMetrix report is the overall audience increases for media properties with a large mobile presence. The report demonstrates how significant and important mobile audiences are becoming to digital media properties. The top three sites with the largest mobile audiences are Google, Yahoo and Facebook, each of whose mobile audiences are approximately 50 percent the size of their desktop audiences. Meanwhile, Pandora’s mobile audience is more than twice its desktop audience. The report also shows how dramatically usage is migrating for some of the premiere online advertising companies. Read >>

Social Apps On The Rise For Mobile (App Annie via Forbes)
App Annie, an app store analytics company, recently presented a report that highlighted the continued rise of social networking as a phenomenon. The study revealed social media to be the 3rd largest category in terms of monthly app revenues in the iOS store, moving up 9 spots over the past year. This places the category just behind games and productivity apps, an impressive feat considering that it was in the 12th spot only a year ago.

Downloads for social apps are up 30 percent year-over-year (and now represent 5 percent of all downloads in Apple‘s app store) while revenue from those downloads has nearly doubled and now accounts for 3 percent of all revenue generated in the app store. The phenomenon is one that seems to be spreading across all regions of the globe, with Japan and the United States still in the lead but growth coming from outside those two countries.

Influential Women In Mobile (Mobify)
In honor of International Women's Day, we wanted to highlight some of the amazing women working in the mobile Web:

1. Mary Meeker, Partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers
2. Julianne Bowman, Principal Consultant at PA Consulting
3. Julie A. Ask, Vice President, Principal Analyst at Forrester
4. Lyza Danger Gardner, Co-Founder at Cloud Four
5. Stefanie Reiger, Co-Founder at Yiibu
6. Angela Steele, CEO at Ansible Mobile
7. Jesse Haines, Head of Marketing at Google Mobile Ads
8. Sara Wachter-Boettcher, Editor-in-Chief at A List Apart

Some of these women are making the Web more adaptive. Others educate businesses, designers, and developers on the importance of the mobile channel and how to get the most out of it. Read >>

How Power Users Use Their Mobile Devices (SessionM via intomobile)
SessionM prepared two infographics to illustrate mobile user behavior and trends. The focus is on the most active mobile user group that is also known as "power users." Read >>