Mobile Email Marketing: (More) Stats for Thought

We recently published some Stats for Thought about consumers' skyrocketing adoption of smart phones and how this trend is fundamentally changing the art and science of email marketing.Well, it seems that with each day that passes we come across more and more juicy bits of information that only further solidify the case that the day when more people open and interact with email on a handheld than any other device is soon approaching--and probably a lot faster than any of us previously imagined.

Morgan Stanley's veteran Internet analyst, Mary Meeker, gave a presentation yesterday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco whose central thesis was that "mobile Internet usage is and will be larger than we think." Here are some of the most interesting facts and stats that she shared with the audience:

• Internet-connected mobile devices outnumber desktops by 10:1 (slide 32, see link to presentation above).
• Mobile Internet adoption is outpacing desktop Internet adoption by 8X -- for example, Morgan Stanley points out that iPhone/iTouch platform sold more than 57 million units within the first 9 quarters after launch, compared to AOL which only attracted 7 million subscribers within the same time frame, (albeit, back in the 90s). (slide 33).
• Apple's iPhone/iTouch tandem also claim the title of the fastest growing hardware in consumer electronics history. (slide 38)
• With more advanced handheld capabilities comes incrementally more Web usage (naturally) - iPhone and Android users represent a very high share of mobile web page views relative to device ownership (slide 39).
• In Japan, where folks are a bit more ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting the latest toys, the vast majority of users are accessing Japan's most popular social networking site, called Mixi, via their mobile (65%) -- way more than the 24% viewing the site via desktop. And that number is actually from earlier in the year - Q1. (slide 44).
• AT&T has recorded a 50X increase in mobile data traffic over the last 3 years alone. In percentage terms, that is +4,923%. (slide 57).