Mobile Focus: 45-54 year olds

This is the first Mobile Focus blog entry in which we want to present mobile usage trends for chosen demographics such as age, income, region, etc.

For us and our clients getting to the core of the target audience is crucial; so we need a clear understanding of mobile habits and needs. Knowing how segments use mobile allows us to come up with better products, whether it’s an app, mobile website or SMS campaign. As ever with mobile, first think about the consumer, and then build tailored mobile solutions around their mobile technology ownership and usage patterns.

To start with, we picked the 45-55 age group which is often underestimated by digital marketers. We think that it is important to understand older consumers, as they become increasingly relevant in an ageing population. In addition, their spending power is the highest of all age groups and they are catching-up with technology such as internet and mobile faster then we may think.

Forty-five to 54 year olds are the wealthiest age group; their budget allowing them to spend money on smart-phones, which they are increasingly doing – but at a slower rate than younger groups –  but still a 10% growth in 2010 – 2011. The Symbian platform is, for the time being, the most popular, with around 10% of 45-54 year olds having Nokia handsets – the number hasn’t changed much in the last year. Google Android users (6.3% in April 2011) are dominating Apple users in this segment and enjoying steady growth (from 1% to 8.4% over the year). RIM handsets had the lowest growth: 1.6% over the last year (representing 5.3% by April 2011).

45-54 year olds: smart-phone penetration and smart-phone platform usage

Not surprisingly, Nokia handsets dominate our top ten handsets for this segment, with Samsung Tocco Lite being the second popular handset and HTC Desire (an Android device) the third. The top two devices are feature-phones, the first one being a low-end handset.

Application usage has steadily grown from 31 to 39% over the year. This is very similar to mobile browser usage, which grew from 24.7% (April 2010) to 33.3% (April 2011).

45-54 year olds: application and mobile web usage

Among 45 – 54 year olds social networking via mobile devices is not the most popular activity (fourth browser access subcategory and second application access category). Nevertheless, access to social networking sites has increased from 3.2% to 6.4% over the past year.

Nearly four per cent of 45-54 year olds use their mobile to check-in via social networks – a figure which grew by 0.7% in the last month.

So, in summary, don’t ignore this group when it comes to mobile web and app based services and campaigns, their adoption of smartphones is increasing rapidly (especially for Android) and their use of mobile data is also steadily growing as we approach a point where over half of the UK population (that’s everyone folks!) is using mobile apps and internet on a regular basis.