Mobile Marketing industry offers incredible opportunities for marketers worldwide. This ebook will show you how to benefit from this awesome business opportunity. Let's look at some interesting Mobile Marketing statistics:Even in the US, SMS technology was not widely used until only a few yearsago - but in June 2008, CellSigns reported that over 75 billion SMS were senteach month (contrast against only 18 billion just 18 months before). It wasmost likely Idol's SMS voting system that got Americans texting.Experian, a marketing services provider in the US, estimates that the numberof SMS users (approximately 1.8 billion at present) is twice that of activeemail users. These text messages are generally read within 15 minutes andresponded to within the hour - compared to email communication whichcould go unread for days.Experian, The Standard, MarketTree and Cellnumbers.com relay thefollowing statistics about international mobile users: 30 countries exceededthe 100% mobile device to population ratio. However, only 80% of thepopulation of the US were mobile users. 60% of the world's population (4.1billion) are mobile subscribers. China has over 400 million subscribers. Thereare over 50 million subscribers in Indonesia. In 2006, there were 241 millionmobile users in the US alone (and 332,156 million people in North America).98% of all handsets in the US have SMS capabilities. 68.7 million US citizensuse SMS and text services. Although a relatively new service to the US, over300 billion SMS messages were sent in 2007 in the US alone. South Africa is6th on the world's top 10 for mobile Internet connectivity Top 10 (which canprobably be contributed to the lack of traditional, desktop based Internetconnectivity). Over 70% of South African mobile subscribers do not own aland line connection. Surprisingly, South Africans over the age of 50 spendmore on their mobile communication than their junior counterparts. Only10% of SMS messages are spam (compared to over 65% of email).The average American text message user in late 2008 sent 357 SMSmessages per month and made or received 204 calls, compared to early2006 where the average user sent 198 texts and made or received 198 calls.A study of South Africa's Mobile connectivity estimated 19 million activemobile users in 2006. As coverage increases, so does the connectivity, with90% of all new cellular connections in the country being prepaid and top-uppackages. (NOTE: South African figures are estimates only as Vodacom is theonly service provider willing to release data.) According to African TelecomsNews, Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa have the fastest growing mobilemarkets. In most areas of East Africa, mobile phone taxes range between25% - 30%, compared to the 17% average of the continent. The mostcommon mobile media content categories in use today include: PortalsEmail Weather News/politics Search Business/finance (especially since therecent economic downturn)Who's Connected? Known as the Baby Boomers - the generation bornbetween the 1940s and 1960s, predominantly in the US and UK - formtoday's older online market. Born between the 1960s and 1980s, GenerationX are more connected than their senior counterparts. They are tech-savvy,but remember a life before the Web, unlike the younger Generation Y -today's teens and 20-somethings - who have generally known the onlineworld from an early age. As you can probably imagine, the youngergeneration are able to recall a lot more Mobile Marketing content thanGeneration X and the Baby Boomers. The younger users are more in tunewith Mobile Marketing due to the increased connectivity and a generalinterest in market related news. Nielsen Mobile reported in mid-2008, that51% of US mobile users responded to some or other form of mobileadvertising; while Jeff Herrmann went on to say that "only 10% of data userssaid they find mobile advertising acceptable".