Mobidia’s free app, which helps users manage roaming charges and bill shock, has another aspect to the business model… providing analytics and insight on application behaviour of real users to mobile app developers and operators.
Mobidia’s app has over 10 million downloads and millions of active opt-in users across 200 countries and can track which applications are driving usage across Android and iOS devices. The data is useful to mobile app developers who want to benchmark their apps versus the competition as well as improve their marketing by understanding penetration, engagement, usage, and installs.
Mobile operators too can see which apps may make sense to bundle in new mobile data offers, look at application usage trends by metro locations and plan launch and pricing strategies. Mobidia also has network usage data such as LTE and Wi-Fi usage (see figure below), plan size and utilisation rates, as well as operator-specific network usage.
4G devices drive data consumption per user, regardless of OS
Global Tablet Monthly Data Usage (Source: Mobidia)
According to Chris Hill, SVP Marketing at Mobidia, “Operators really need to understand the apps and games actually being used rather than generic download data. Our new app dashboard provides leaderboards and top app charts across all genres and geographies, all based on usage across cellular and WiFi networks. Getting to understand their users’ behaviour better is the key for operators to building a better relationship to drive new services and loyalty ”.
While operators can and do collect this data themselves, using a similar app or network probe, they would still lack comparative data from other operators and ability to understand at a macro level what is driving application usage in a particular country, metro or demographic group. This can help with location-specific and contextual marketing and advertising opportunities.
