1000watt Consulting sees the future on a small screen

This week I came across an article on Inman.com  (the best source for real estate news) that was a reprint off the 1000watt blog where Brian Boero spells out a compelling explanation of why real estate applications and MLS services will better serve the home buyer on a portable device. Boero states that “The handheld device will be the locus of real estate technology innovation in the coming years.”
Of course, I can only agree. Your phone is your most personal device and still predominately advertising-free. It can deliver a more focused user experience when you optimize the “limited-capabilities.” Boero calls it a “liberating” experience for the home buyer and “most importantly, the experience is portable, which is perfectly suited to real estate.”
Location awareness, embedded maps and geo-coded MLS information can be combined to deliver a simple and reliable service that is hard to replicate on a PC that is designed to provide much more. Boero explains that “This is why I think the Zillow iPhone app is better than Zillow.com. It’s why I am so excited about the numerous IDX-based native iPhone apps in development as I type.”
I look forward to Brian’s reports and experiencing for myself the best new real estate applications for your phone.

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Email, Search and Facebook - Mobile Web has arrived!

Numerous reports this week point to the fact that Mobile Internet Usage is reaching critical mass in Canada with close to 4 million mobile web surfers. The growth is staggering when you consider that during the first 3 months of 2009 the rate increased from 16% to 21.3% of all cellphone users, that’s over 900,000 more people accessing the Internet on their phone.
The Nielsen Company, the first third-party analysts to report on the Canadian mobile market see specific trends driving mobile Internet growth, such as the increased use of smartphones, the development of popular phone applications and unlimited data plans. Many advertising campaigns are expanding consumer awareness that mobile phone capabilities are providing a similar user experience to that of using a personal computer.
The top five sites accessed on the mobile web are Windows Live Mail with 1.4 million unique visitors. Google Mobile Search (850,000 unique users), Facebook (784,000 unique users), The Weather Network (674,000 unique users) and Yahoo! Mail with (652,000 unique users).
Another interesting fact is that North America adoption rates are currently 12 to 18 months behind those of Japan and Korea. 

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Web-to-Mobile Widget - Send MLS information to your phone

3locations today, is delivering on its promise to provide Realtors and real estate companies with a way to send MLS information from a website to a mobile phone. This customizable widget will help users reduce their need to print real estate listings and increase the number of ways that Realtors can interact with their clients. The widget will automatically register a new user, generate a password and send them the real estate information they are requesting.
Currently, 3locations is only offering MLS information for the Greater Vancouver area but our system is designed to add real estate listings from other cities as their clients needs expand.

 
(Now active - try our widget for Vancouver, BC MLS information)

Listings are delivered using SMS (text messaging) with an embedded link to access the mobile web.
Today, it seems that everything is being built for the smartphone, with all major phone operating systems offering an application marketplace (iPhone App Store, Blackberry App World & Android App Market). We support this effort but 3locations is building compelling products that Realtors can provide to all their customers by SMS. Products that produce measurable results and hopefully sell homes! That being said, you should see the phone application we are working on. Coming soon… social networking for real estate!

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Mobile advertising to grow 36% in 2009 and reach $229M

Fierce Mobile Content reported May 5, 2009 that U.S. mobile advertising will grow from $169 million in 2008 to revenues of $229 million in 2009. Global media and forecasting firm Magna credits the revenue growth to the increasing number of wireless subscribers using text messaging and the mobile web. The forecast predicts that SMS advertising will perform strongly, with text messaging platforms representing the “best near-term potential for advertisers” who want to use mobile phones to support broad-reaching marketing campaigns. This contrasts with slower growth rates for other types of mobile media campaigns such as mobile search, in-call media, mobile video, mobile coupons and mobile gaming.
Magna explains that “few (types of) media have captured the passions of consumers, marketers and inventory owners alike as the mobile advertising space has.” The popularity of mobile phones, with more than 270 million U.S. subscriptions at the end of 2008 (according to the CTIA) and the increasing use of text messaging (virtually every device has the capability to receive SMS) is supporting the growth in advertising revenues.
Also, smartphones like the Blackbery and iPhone are driving growth with the popularity of phone applications among consumers, marketers and carriers. This results in exponentially higher levels of data (and mobile web) consumption. This segment of the market will continue to expand rapidly as more mobile operating systems create “App Stores” to drive similar products to a wider range of devices.

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New Report: 20% of U.S. Homes only use Wireless Phones

This week, the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) released a report stating that 20.2% of homes contain “Wireless Families”. In this report, homes are considered to contain “wireless families” if there are no working landline telephones inside the household. In fact, approximately 18.4% of all adults (more than 41 million adults) lived in households with only wireless telephones while 18.7% of all children (nearly 14 million children) lived in households with only wireless telephones.
The percentage of households that are wireless-only has been steadily increasing (2.7% over last year). Other data collected in this study includes:

• More than three in five adults living only with unrelated adult roommates (60.6%) were in households with only wireless telephones. This is the highest prevalence rate among the population subgroups examined.
• Nearly two in five adults renting their home (39.2%) had only wireless telephones. Adults renting their home were more likely than adults owning their home (9.9%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
• More than two in five adults aged 25-29 years (41.5%) lived in households with only wireless telephones. Approximately one-third (33.1%) of adults aged 18-24 years lived in households with only wireless telephones.
• As age increased from 30 years, the percentage of adults living in households with only wireless telephones decreased: 21.6% for adults aged 30-44 years; 11.6% for adults aged 45-64 years; and 3.3% for adults aged 65 years and over. However, the percentage of wireless-only adults within each age group has increased over time.
• Men (20.0%) were more likely than women (17.0%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
• Adults living in poverty (30.9%) and adults living near poverty (23.8%) were more likely than higher income adults (16.0%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
• Adults living in the South (21.3%) and Midwest (20.8%) were more likely than adults living in the Northeast (11.4%) or West (17.2%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.

Among households with both landline and cellular telephones, 24.4% received all or almost all calls on the cellular telephones. These wireless-mostly households make up 14.5% of all households.

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