A few months ago, we wrote about mobile ad network Greystripe’s study that placed “iPhone moms” (mothers of young children who own iPhones) as one of the new and growing mobile advertising demographics on the street. In August, Greystripe claimed that iPhone moms made up 29.5% of all iPhone users. Today, the ad network is releasing a follow-up report which offers detailed behavioral characteristics of moms in their iPhone ad network. Similar to the “soccer moms” demographic, iPhone moms are a consumer segment that has vast potential for advertisers and app developers.
The report shows several interesting patterns. For example, over 59% of iPhone moms surveyed say they let their children use their iPhone. And 41% of moms who own iPhons download apps specifically for their children to use.
Shopping is another key use of the iPhone for moms. Close to 60% of iPhone moms depend on their phone to locate the nearest store around them while 41.94% of moms use the iPhone to keep track of shopping lists. Other shopping activities include comparison shopping, (39.43%) downloading coupons (19%) or keeping track of items on sale (22.94%).
When it comes to actually shopping at the grocery store, a little over half of iPhone moms use their phones at the grocery store, with 40.14% using it as a shopping list tool and 22.58% using it as a recipe resource at the store.
Unsurprisingly, close to 90% of moms who have iPhones use it for personal entertainment which includes listening to music, browsing the Internet or using entertainment apps. Email comes in at a close second place with over 79.57% of iPhone moms surveyed using their phone for checking messages. And it seems that many moms use the device as an organizational tool with over 64% of iPhone moms using their phones to manage their calendar and schedule, which is 9% higher than the rest of the iPhone community as a whole.
Moms are looking to the iPhone and other smartphones as both a valuable organizational tool and an entertainment portal, making the iPhone a valuable advertising platform. While Greystripe says that this demographic have tended to be late adopters, I’m not so sure if this is true considering the rapid growth of “Mommy bloggers” over the past few years. There’s a blog that’s devoted to iPhone Moms and offers recommendations for kid and baby-friendly iPhone apps for moms to download.
Great story. I think what’s happened for a lot of Moms is, for the stay at home Moms, since they weren’t attached to a company, they never were able to truly experience and use the BlackBerry organizational service. The iPhone calendaring, contacts, etc. is there first experience with some of this functionality.
Also why I think vast majority of Apps are going to go free — the ability to have these CHOs (that’s Chief Household Officers) using your app will be worth a ton of cash, “in-app.”
Completely consistent with everything we heard at Apps For Brands conference we co-produced with AdAge.
“While Greystripe says that this demographic have tended to be late adopters, I’m not so sure if this is true considering the rapid growth of “Mommy bloggers” over the past few years. There’s a blog that’s devoted to iPhone Moms and offers recommendations for kid and baby-friendly iPhone apps for moms to download.”
The growth of “mommy bloggers” has nothing to do with mobile phone adoption rates. Also, citing a blog with under 5K monthly isn’t much of a counter example. Nice try though.
Very interesting article. I was surprised my blog is getting more female than male users and “soccer mom” could describe a few.
Then again, I’m at that stage of life where having the video recorder (can you call it a camcorder anymore?) in my pocket is great. Having YouTube and TV shows to use to bribe my kids when needed is awesome. Checking Weather Bug to see how close the Doppler Radar shows the rain to be is nice as well. Just makes sense.
This inferenced data is worthless – surveys across the greystripe network? there’s barely any users on that platform
Who wants to use a phone their mom uses? My mom usually gets my leftovers. Maybe this is not good publicity for the iPhone.
They stated in the article that it’s moms of young children…so toddler to elementary age is my guess, not teenagers and older. My 2 yr old daughter knows how to use my iPhone and uses it a lot to play games. There are a lot of educational apps for kids this age and it’s great for them to use to learn and keep them busy when grocery shopping or running other errands.
You totally misunderstood the context here. This survey makes it clear that moms are letting their young children (too young to be trusted with their own iPhone) use their iPhone to play games and listen to music. That’s very different from your situation. Also, just because your mom is not savvy enough to get the latest and greatest, doesn’t mean she’s representative of the group surveyed by Greystripe.
Here a selection of the last iPhone mom apps. a pretty cool blog indeed for moms
http://appsfire...eiPhonemom+Apps
As the husband of a stay-at-home mom who has an iPhone, you’re forgetting one caveat: The stay-at-home mom is a great recipient of the iPhone dad’s last generation iPhone. This accelerates the iPhone mom adoption curve dramatically.
+1
We see a continued adoption of moms and dads using the iphone/touch as an educational device. We make software for the iphone that is geared to toddlers and young children to keep them busy, educated and engaged. http://www.juic...boxsoftware.com – check it out if you have kids.
Some kids are getting their own iphone instead of a DS.
This actually should be a concern for parents as there is no filtering software for the iphone. All use should be strictly supervised by parents.
Yeah, I’m thinking of getting my toddler an iPod Touch instead of a handheld gaming device like DS because it’s easier to use and has more age appropriate and educational games.
That’s true, my kid just love my iPhone, especially game like dice and .. eats it
http://www.flic...57622667669242/
Particularly wIth young children, these all make sense with moms. As a dad I can certainly relate to downloading programs for kids. With these programs, the iPhone has doubled as a *portable* educational and gaming device for the young children, but with the former being very scarce at the moment. I hope to see more educational games on the App Store.
I’ve met a lot of women recently who have iPhones. They are not Moms at all but young single ladies.
Almost all the moms I know have iPhones and their kids all know how to use them, mine included. These are toddler aged kids too.
I knew it! It had to be true. My five-year-old still favors Scoops…
Mobile was definitely on the radar at the Marketing2Moms conference I just attended in Chicago. But for all the comments about Stay-at-Home-Moms above, let me remind everyone of a surprising statistic: the % of women with children ages 1+ in the workforce is IDENTICAL to that of women without kids. 72%. SAHM are not as common as many people imagine.
Yep, and the article never said stay-at-home moms either, they just said moms with young children.
Nice article. I belong to a local Mom’s group in fairly affluent area. I would say only about 30 percent of us have iPhones. We definitely share and discuss all the latest apps that we use to help through our crazy days. For example we recently all started using NeuroMobile. Many of the Moms have bought iPhones just to get access to some of these apps.
Wow, does the IPhone totally RULE or what? I mean really!
RT
http://www.anonymous.ua.tc
OMGosh no way dude, does the IPhone just totally RULE or what! Wow!
Jess
http://www.anonymous.ua.tc
Mother
I’d
Like to
Fone
Does anyone know the total number of iPhone moms there are? Hard to quantify percentages without knowing the total number.
I run an iPhone app blog for girls that focuses on the same demographic. It’s for sale do to personal health problems if anyone is interested
A Girl
As an iPhone mom I have found a few apps that help me with my child instead of just keeping them busy. My favorite right now is Family Matters.
It has been great around Thanksgiving to get us all talking to each other rather than zoning out playing video games.