MobileWebsiteWatch

According to a study realeased on the 4th by the Kelesy Group, about 19% of cellphone-owning

Smartphones offered by Verizon

Americans now have a smartphone and, shockingly, 49.2% plan on getting one within one year. The study goes on to disect the things people use the mobiel web for which include: searching for products, getting maps and directions, getting info about movies and entertainment and accessing social networking sites. All of these areas clocked in double digit growth year over year and with half the cell phone owners out there who plan on upgrading to a smartphone in 1 year, that should accellerate more in 2009.

As this surge of mobile users comes online, you can be almost certain that once they are shelling out for new phones with advanced data services, a seamless and successful mobile web experience on any company’s web site will pretty much be a basic customer expectation. As we’ve posted here, smart companies like Sears, Gamefly, American Airlines, and Victoria’s Secret have already implemented an optimized mobile web view of thier sites and are building up market share. Getting mobile should be top priority for anyone not yet there as everyday customers who try and interact with you on mobile are frustrated and lost.

In the Sears Mobile press release (from Women’s Wear Daily here), Sears mobile innovations team leader Thomas Emmons says it best:

“If you’re marketing to people who read 85 percent of their e-mails on a BlackBerry, and you don’t have a good mobile site, you’re losing that customer,”

Sears is a great example of mobile best practices and others will have to either follow suit or get out of the way.

In case there is still any question about whether or not the mobile internet is a “trend” new research released last week shows that sales of smartphones int he US are growing at 40% year over year while the rest of the market is at about 10%. When this is coupled with the fact that revenue from data plans is surging among carriers, it is clear that in the future (the very very near future, in fact), mobile web browsing will be as common as cellphone calls are today. Companies who take advantage of this today will reap the benefit of taking the time to be the go-to site for their niche on mobile before their competition can get in the game. This is much in the same way that Netscape beat Microsoft into the portal game in the 90’s.

Despite the slowing ecomomy: the paper points out that mobile phone sales grew 15% this year:

Despite a slowing economy, the global mobile phone market had solid double-digit growth in the second quarter, according to new data from IDC.

The report, “IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker,” said vendors shipped a total of 306 million units, a 15% increase from the same period a year earlier.

Since the start of the year, vendors have been wary of the potential decrease in demand for mobile phones,” said Ramon Llames, a senior research analyst at IDC, in a statement. “That has not stopped vendors from experimenting with and releasing a host of mid-range and high-end devices with GPS, touchscreen, and multimedia. This also goes for hotly contested emerging markets, where vendors are introducing phones that offer features in addition to voice telephony.”The report also said that smartphones are seeing growth rates near 40% year-over-year, while the rest of the industry is growing at roughly 10%. But the line between a smartphone and a feature phone is quickly blurring, and the research firm expects to see more mid-range handsets with higher-end capabilities.