The advent of mobile marketing

Today's Marketing Week describes how on this day (April 3) in 1973, the first-ever mobile phone call was made which created a platform for the 'mobile marketing revolution'. Marketing Week summarises some of the most iconic mobile marketing campaigns. Just under 20 years later, in 1992, the first ever SMS was sent. This was done by a telecoms engineer that sent the message which said, "Merry Christmas". This has been stated as being a momentous occasion which altered the way in which we greet eachother on both Christmas and New Year's.
In 1998, the first commercial ringtone was created in Finland by Vesa-Matti “Vesku” Paananen. Paananen was said to have persuaded Finnish telecoms firm Radiolinja to develop a service letting Nokia owners personalise their device’s ringtones.

The video above is an example of another significant occurence as the advert shows how it marked the start of mobile internet usage in 1998. However, In 2008, the world saw the launch of the App Store (via apple) which accompanied the launch of the iPhone 3G and finally made the words ‘mobile app developer’ understandable to marketers up and down the country. This could arguably be seen as one of (if not the) most significant changes which altered the way in which marketing could then be used in a new form. This new platform allowed marketers a way of permanantly communicating with their audiences if they were successful in getting their audiences to purchase and keep the app. The different events as described above changed the way in which we use our mobile phones; every year since the first SMS was sent in 1992, mobile phone developers have come up with ways to change the usages so that it changed from just emergency calls to now the most recent era of being able to shop from our phones by taking a photo of the item that you have just ran out of. The speed at which the mobile phone market is changing is frightful, the only question is, what can mobile phones be used for next? The answer to this will come with time.