According to Business Insider, only 26% of Verizon subscribers, have smartphones! (For those, like my dad and other older people, who don’t know what a smartphone is, it’s a cell phone that has internet access) But yes, only 26%! AND 75% of contract subscribers that are due for upgrades, are currently upgrading to smartphones! AT&T’s has a bigger smartphone customer-base percentage wise, but it’s still only 35%!
Nielsen is also chiming in that by the end of the year, there will be 150 million-160 million Americans with smartphones! How do these #’s compare to how many people who the internet on their computers? The U.S. has a little bit above 200 million users! 200 million pc internet users! 150-160 million smartphone users! Get the picture? Well, if you still dont, here’s a visual:
Let me be unequivocally clear here. THESE NUMBERS ARE CRAZY!!! If you run a small business and your website is not optimized for smartphone users, you’ll be MISSING OUT! In the next year, in my humble opinion, every small business that has a website should have a mobile website. The difference between a mobile website and regular website is that the mobile website is narrow, vertically. The link buttons are especially big. The overall navigation of the site is so easy 5 year-olds and people over 60 alike won’t get lost on it : ) (No offense to those over 60 lacking internet know-how. I, myself for instance don’t even know how to change the oil in my car. Everybody has their skill-sets)
One last thing to keep an eye on is how media buying, aka pay per click is effected. Google is already experimenting with “pay per call” for smartphone users. So in other words, instead of Google charging anytime someone clicks on the link to your site, they charge for every click on the phone # that causes your phone to start dialing the #. There have been a lot of people trying to figure out the right business model for pay per call, but i could totally see it working extremely well with smartphone users. Hopefully other publisher networks will follow suit in doing what Google is. Keep an eye on it.