Tech Trends

Mobile Future in Focus

The Annual ComScore Report

“2011 was a pivotal year for the mobile industry, marked by the dramatic rise of smartphones in the mainstream, the burgeoning of tablets and other web-enabled connected devices, and a cultural shift toward cross-platform digital media consumption. With mobile becoming an increasing part of comprehensive digital marketing strategies, it becomes more important than ever to understand how the current trends are shaping the mobile environment, with an eye to what lies ahead for 2012.”

The key findings of this report go to Smartphone adoption, the platform war, the surge in application usage, and the retail disruption of the technology.

Factoids:

• Nearly 42% of U.S. mobile subscribers now user smartphones.
• Mobile media usage has surpassed the 50% penetration mark.
• Google Android has captured almost half of the U.S. smartphone market, Apple iOS has nearly 30%.
• Mobile applications usage now equals mobile browsing; categories most accessed include health, retail, commerce-related categories such as electronic payments and auction sites.
• More than 50% of U.S. smartphone users have done a mobile retail search while inside a store, nearly 20% of users scan barcodes, and 12.5% compared prices via their mobile in while in-store.
• Mobile users accessing job listings has grown 74% in 2011 over 2010.
• 77% more U.S. smartphone users accessed social networking or blog destinations via their mobile device year over year.
• Tablets are taking fourth place in digital media consumption after TV, PCs, and smartphones.

Hiring in areas of digital media is exploding. Redfish is currently recruiting for many roles in application development and mobile sales and marketing positions. Mobile platform and digital media companies typically offer a dynamic, collaborative and fast-paced environment along with competitive salaries and benefits. Successful sales and marketing candidates typically come from a background in software, rich media technology, mobile solutions, or ad-serving technologies. Successful development candidates need expertise in: java/J2EE, Ajax, Ruby, Rails, Web Application Development, SQL, HTML, JSON, XML, JavaScript, CSS, EXT-JS or similar Web UI toolkits, and distributed application development.

Click here to access the complete ComScore report.