By Chris Lee

The introduction of the smartphone has revolutionised the mobile market, resulting in the need for marketers to embrace this emerging platform when considering their mobile strategy. The US smartphone market alone saw a growth of 60 per cent between February 2010 to February 2011, according to comScore, and market trends suggest this unstoppable expansion is set to continue with the International Data Corporation predicting a worldwide growth of 49.2 per cent in 2011.

A new study from email marketing firm Exact Target has shed some light on mobile phone feature usage and therefore how marketers should target mobile users in the future. The data is US-centric, where Android-based phones occupy a third (33 per cent) of the marketing, Apple occupies a quarter (25 per cent) with its iPhone and BlackBerry takes 19 per cent of the market.

Feature creatures

Exact Target found that 87 per cent of smartphone users make at least one call a day, meaning calls are the most common use of smartphones over apps and even text messaging. Sending texts is the second most common use of the phone, with 78 per cent of smartphone users sending at least one text per day.

Email, Internet browsing and Facebook are the next most-used features. Two thirds (66 per cent) of smartphone users check email at least ones a day.

When it comes to Web surfing, it is more common among 18-24 year olds than their younger counterparts. The report states that this is most likely due to the limitations placed on under-18s throughout the school day.

Emerging trends

“Checking in” using location-based services – such as Foursquare or Facebook Places - on a mobile phone is still not a mainstream activity, but adoption is definitely increasing—and the levels of reported usage are somewhat unexpected, according to Exact Target.

Just under a third (28 per cent) of smartphone owners have checked into a geosocial network, representing 12 per cent of the over US online population. Women are most likely to use check-in services, with 37 per cent of women having made a check-in compared to just 21 per cent of men.

QR codes, the black and white pixillated offer symbols, are less popular than check-ins, with just a quarter (24 per cent) of smartphone owners (ten per cent of the US online population) having scanned a QR code to obtain more information about a product, business or event.

What is a really fast-growing trend, however, is the popularity of price comparisons in store, with smartphone users comparing prices in-store to see if they can get a better deal elsewhere or online.

According to Jeff Rohrs, vice president, ExactTarget’s Marketing Research and Education Group, mobile users are now totally dependent on their smartphones.

“For years now, we’ve heard proclamations that this year will be the ‘Year of Mobile’… then the next year…then the next,” Rohrs said. “Expecting this highly-touted revolution to arrive with a bang, we failed to recognise that the ‘Year of Mobile’ is happening all around us—not as a unified cultural experience, but in a moment of personal awakening for each individual, triggered by a single purchase: the smartphone.”