Several times i have wrote that there are twice as much cell-phones than PC-s. Some brighter heads are also predicting that in the future mobile advertising will take a big share from internet advertising. It seems obvious - the number of cell-phones will increase faster, people have it all the time, easy to use device, well targeted target groups. It all seems so simple and beautiful, but what is the situation at the moment?
European research firm Vanson Bourne made a report on 50 global brands’ attitudes toward mobile marketing and these numbers don’t give any reasons to smile. It seems that companies have still some doubts and the main issue is how the potential customer will react, is it invading to peoples personal lives or not. Here are some key points:

* more than two-thirds of companies expected to spend up to 10% of their marketing budget on mobile messaging campaigns within two years
* 28% of brands were considering implementing SMS or MMS campaigns during the next 12 months
* 58% said that their mobile marketing campaign would use up to 15% of their total ad budget by 2012, 32% said this would happen in the next two years
* One third of all respondents said that they expected up to 10% of recipients of mobile marketing messages to undertake a financial transaction
* 52% said that they expected up to 10% of recipients of mobile marketing messages to request more information or a product sample
* 46% are concerned that mobile marketing is too intrusive
* 41% respondents were unsure that they could target campaigns specifically enough to avoid spamming problem
* 36% would require detailed information on how the user responded to the message
* 20% would want definite confirmation that the user’s handset had actually received the message

If we are looking what people are looking from google then it also describes the situation quite clearly. I can’t see any progress in past 3 years. According to the fact “twice as many cell-phones than computer” i would picture that the blue line should rise continuously, but in fact it has staid quite stagnant. So it seems to me that mobile marketing will stay as supportive action in marketing for some time, maybe Android will change something but we will see.

This is a typical law of development - the pioneers are making something sensational and the followers are doing right after the success something quite similar. But the followers aren’t stupid, they won’t make same mistakes. They will focus on the pioneers weaknesses and make a better product with more features and benefits. It seems that LG has simply followed the rule and been “impressively innovative”. This may be just a rip of, but i’d rather buy Voyager than iPhone, mainly because 3G, but at the same time i would differ from others. Personally i don’t think Voyager will be a real competitor to iPhone, because Voyager isn’t a “lifestyle” product, but it will take some customers away indeed.

Some facts about Voyager as well:
* Voyager has a large external touch screen that also slides open sideways for a full QWERTY keypad. This gives users a choice on how they access the phone’s features

* Voyager will use Verizon Wireless’ fast 3G data network to access the mobile Internet, on the other hand iPhone uses slower AT&T Edge data network

* Voyager also comes with multimedia capabilities, including an HTML Web browser; Verizon Wireless’ V Cast mobile TV, video, and music service; and the ability to play MP3, WMA, and unprotected AAC files. For more storage room, the phone has a removable MicroSD memory slot that holds up to 8 Gbytes of memory