[LINK] RFI: Adoption of Smart Phone Apps

[Roger Clarke]

I need to find survey data on the actual use of mobile phones for 
purposes more sophisticated than voice- and text-messaging.  I'm 
thinking of mainly of Symbian, iOS and Android smartphones, but it's 
unreasonable to exclude RIM and MS.

The kinds of categories I'm thinking of are:

-  simple mobile data services, e.g.
    -  Web-page download and search
    -  time management / shared calendars
    -  Web-upload / email-attmts, e.g. of photos taken using the phone
    -  video-clip streaming

-  mcommerce, incl.
    -  browser-based purchase (whether by payment, by subscription, or
       bundled), e.g. of ring-tones, music, sports reports, news-clips,
       apps, but also physical goods and services delivered in meatspace
    -  non-browser-based, e.g. using NFC chips
    -  Internet Banking
    -  online gambling

-  transaction services other than mcommerce, e.g.
    -  eGovernment
    -  eVoting
    -  online multi-person gaming

-  location-aware services beyond the trivial, e.g.
    -  'special offers to sell' from nearby vendors
    -  advice when devices of relevant people are nearby

-  large-data-set mobile services, e.g. (what?)

-  advanced and enhanced mobile service, aka Mobile Value Services,
    which I think means things like:
    -  eHealth
    -  eEducation

But this isn't an area I specialise in, and there may be a far better 
classification scheme than my ad hoc structure.

Many thanks for leads, on-list or off-list!!

____________________________________________

Background:

I'm editing a Special Section of refereed papers.

A Finnish Professor who has researched mcommerce for a decade has a 
paper that says that take-up of services beyond messaging among the 
general public has been low, and the high hopes built around mobile 
data services and large data-sets did not happen.

I said that my impression was that a great deal of commerce is being 
transacted on mobile phones.  But he challenged me to come up with 
real survey data to support my impression.  But of course I'm 
depending on my observations of a small and biassed sample of 'the 
general public', and on anecdotes peddled by consultants and 
marketers, and reticulated by a mostly-unquestioning media.

Hence my need to know whether there is real data about phone usage.

US usage is atypical, so Pew Reports are of use, but aren't the answer.

http://pewresearch.org/topics/internetandtechnology/
and hence:
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Smartphones/Summary.aspx
http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Apps-update/Overview.aspx
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2123/celol-phone-apps-mobile-downloads
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2096/mobile-social-location-based-services-geosocial-social-media-location-tagging


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law               University of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University