Mobile Not Just For Big Brands

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AccuraCast Mobile Website Design

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In 2008, analysts and industry leaders seemed unabashed about their enthusiasm for the future of mobile advertising. Sterling Market Intelligence forecast mobile advertising revenues will reach $5.08 billion in North America and Western Europe by 2012. Thomson Financial predict Google’s 2009 mobile ad revenue alone will reach $21.31 billion. Gartner predict that the worldwide mobile advertising market will grow from $895 million in 2007 to $14.6 billion in 2011, while the Kelsey Group forecast that the US mobile ad market will grow from $33.2 million to $1.4 billion in 2012. Forrester are the most conservative, predicting less than $1 billion in mobile ad revenue by 2012.

In spite of the downturn in the economy since early 2008, mobile website design and development services are still in high demand as an increasing number of medium and large businesses as well as mobile-specific startups are looking to expand their service offering, include cutting edge content and target mobile Internet users.

Small businesses, though, seem reluctant to exploit opportunities in the space as the barriers to entry seem high. For starters, they'd have to pay for a mobile website. Then they'd probably have to figure out how to modify it, update it and host it, or pay someone even more to do so.

Both of those fears are largely unfounded. The mobile industry is primarily to blame for this. A number of really cheap options have been available for a while now:

• Mippin's free mobilizer allows publishers to convert their feeds into a mobile format for free
  
• AccuraCast's £99 Mobile Website Design service provides bespoke mobile micro-site development from just £99
• Wapple Canvas starts at £89.50 per month and allows business owners to build, host and manage their own mobile sites.

Reference: Stats taken from Forecasting The Growth of Mobile Advertising