The evolution theory of mobile marketing. Can you live without your smartphone?

Let’s take a look at the above images. Remember a time where our phones used to look like the top image, the reign of nokia and how our phones served simple purposes like making calls and messaging. Now, our phones all look like the image below. Our lives have changed with the introduction of smartphones. Take a look around the bus or train and almost everyone is glued to their phones. A mobile phone used to be a luxury, but now it has become a necessity. In 2015, there were 4.15 Billion users worldwide and that number is constantly increasing at around 3-4% every year. Most of us can’t live without our phones, as we can basically do everything now on our phones. We can surf the net with our phones, take pictures, play games, listen to music, and even pay for our purchases with e-wallet on our phones (Samsung and Apple Pay) Now let’s think about it, when we download a free game or a free to use service app like Spotify, what do we often see?

Free Mobile Apps

That’s right! Advertisements and advertisements everywhere! Companies are actually leveraging on “free mobile apps” to advertise and market their products and services to consumers. “Free apps” appeal to most consumers as they do not have to pay a fee upfront, but the real cost of using this “free apps” is that consumers are being exposed to marketing campaigns and messages. For example, Spotify makes you listen to a 30 seconds advertisement unless you subscribe to their premium membership. That 30 seconds advertisement captures our attention and might actually make us interested in the product and service that is being advertised. For those who wish to skip the advertisements, they will spend money to subscribe to Spotify premium. Thus, it’s a win-win situation for Spotify (despite being a free app) as they earn from companies advertising on their app and with premium subscription service. Spotify premium subscribers figures jumped from 18 million in 2015 to 83 million in 2018, almost 5 times within the span of 3 years!

5G Networks

If we look at our smartphones, we are probably used to seeing icons like H+, 3G, 4G. The G represents the generation of each technology advancement. We went from just being able to make phone calls and talk to our friends during the 1G network era to making calls, sending messages, surfing the net and streaming high quality videos at fast speeds with 4G network. But hold up, all this is going to change with the introduction of the 5G network.

5G networks has speed of 20GBs per second as compared to 4G speed of 10 to 20 MBs per second, an astonishing 100 to 250 times faster! Imagine streaming and downloading dozens of Netflix and Youtube videos in HD at the same time. 5G networks’ low-latency rate reduces the delay of sending and receiving information to 1 millisecond. Wow, say goodbye to lag and buffering! This allows mobile app marketers to capitalise by acquiring greater data for location-based marketing and push notifications.
Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality will also benefit from 5G network as we can finally unleash the full potential of them with the streaming capacity of 5G networks.

With all that said, the evolution of smartphones and mobile marketing has changed our lives greatly and with the introduction of the new 5G networks, things will continue to bloom, making mobile marketing even more relevant and important in the future. So, what free mobile apps that you have personally used and felt engaged by their advertisements? And how do you think 5G networks will change your daily life? Let me know in the comments below!