The mobile youth market… should a company's go to market strategy rely on such target alone? Should the youth market be considered at all?

Xen wrote a very good article on the mobile youth market titled Special: A Sneak Peak at the mobileYouth report 2007, where she interviews Savka Andic, Research Associate at the Wireless World Forum, who is also the co-author of the mobileYouth 2006 report.

On a different perspective, Ajit believes that Mobile Youth is a fundamentally flawed strategy! for the Mobile Web.

My take on the topic of the mobile youth market in general is as follows:

  • They are early adopters
  • They expose a very strong social behavior, today mainly via texting
  • They expose a very content-oriented consumption (and sharing) behavior

The mobile application market today is predominantly driven by:

  • Early adopters (still)
  • Content (search, ring-tones, photos, feeds, texting, and of course voice!, etc.)
  • Social (communication and sharing with others, via voice, texting, twitters, texting again, and more texting, communities, friends, etc.)

If I were to draw a Venn diagram between the mobile youth and the mobile application market today, you would see that the intersection between mobile and youth is practical, and is real, and should be in everyone strategy today, especially if your mobile application has social elements in it. In 10 years, things will be different (maybe), and everyone will be mobile (maybe).

The mobile youth is about quick and “dirty” or Q&D communication or usage (OK, I just made up that acronym); this is “dirty” as in that it doesn't have to necessarily be pretty, but it has to be functional, and reliable and simple to use/follow. This is in part why the mobile web, or other type of application platform is not really predominant within the mobile youth as texting is. Latency and flow does matter; being one click away does matter.

There is so much to explore when it comes to new ways for communication, don't you agree? We truly are just starting… pretty exciting…

The mobile youth market is perfect for testing your mobile content-and-social-oriented application.

ceo