Online Hispanic Trends

Latino Smartphone Usage Outpaces that of the General Population

A new report by Scarborough Research indicates that cellular usage among Latinos is increasing at a faster rate than among the general population. 

Confirming past research, the study shows that more than eight in ten Hispanic adults use moble phones and that they are much more likely to use more mobile phone features, particularly text messaging.  But what is most interesting are the findings on smartphone usage.

According to Scarborough...

"Nineteen percent of Hispanic adults currently live in a household that owns one or more smartphones – such as Blackberries or iPhones –versus five percent in 2005. Twenty‐three percent of the general population currently owns these devices in their household, growing from nine percent in 2005."

Although the figures for smartphone usage were lower back in 2005, Latinos are keeping pace with the general market in terms of smartphone adoption. 

Are marketers and smartphone application developers paying attention?

Read the Scarborough Research Press Release.

Text4Baby- Using Personalized Messaging to Help Latinas through Early Motherhood

Just published a blog on Bixal's site on how the the National Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies Coalition (HMHB) is using text messaging to reach and inform pregnant women and new moms. 

Read the full piece on the Bixal Blog and share your comments!

The Latino Digital Divide and Young Latinos' Cell Phone Usage

The Pew Hispanic Center released two new reports today: The Latino Digital Divide: The Native Born versus The Foreign Born and How Young Latinos Communicate with Friends in the Digital Age

One of the key findings in the first report is that technology among foreign born Latinos still lags behind their U.S.-born counterparts, especially in the area of Internet use.

  

The second report on how young Latinos communicate provides some great data on how Latinos ages 16-25 use their cell phones to communicate as summarized in the table below, the differences between natives and foreign born, and cell phone ownership and use as compared to young non-Hispanics.

 

Source: The Pew Hispanic Center

The Hispanic Mobile Opportunity

The ever-increasing sophistication and accessibility of web-ready mobile phones has made using a phone for information and entertainment needs an essential part of everyday life for millions of Americans. However, not everyone is connecting to the mobile web in equal measure. Demographic data on mobile phone usage reveals that U.S. Hispanics, especially younger Hispanics, have been over-indexing in mobile media usage for years.....

Read the full article at HispanicAd

Creative Hispanic Mobile Marketing from Nestle

Recognizing that the Hispanic is more mobile that the general market - if there is such a thing these days, Nestle has launched an innovative IPhone application to promote sales of Carnation Evaporated Milk. The mobile site and app draw recipes from Nestle's http://MiCocinaLatina.com website and puts information in the hands of consumers where they are most likely to use it...at the point of sale.

The article points to research done by the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicating that "in 2009 more than 47 percent of Hispanics used a handheld device to go online, compared to 28 percent of Caucasians."

The bilingual IPhone app offers a very creative and innovative feature that allows users to shake their phone, like they would the evaporated milk before cooking with it, to generate a random recipe.

Read the full article at: Mobile Marketer

Social Media and Mobile Internet Use of Hispanic Teens and Young Adults

The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently published a report entitled Social Media & Mobile Internet Use of Teens and Young Adults. 

A few of the more interesting findings on teens and young adults in general include: 

• Blogging and commenting on blogs by teens and young adults has decreased since 2006 while it has increased among older adults (from 28% to 14%),
• Both teen and adult use of social networking sites has increased significantly, but the sites where teens and young adults maintain their profiles are different, with 66% using MySpace compared to 36% of those 30 and over, and most interesting....
• Only 8% of Internet users age 12-17 use Twitter.

With respect to Latino teens and young adults, the results of Pew's research show that:

• Although not as often as White teens and young adults, Hispanic teens and young adults report going online once a day or three to five times a week.

• Although laptops have overtaken desktops as the computer of choice, Hispanic adults are less likely than White adults to own a desktop or laptop computer.

• Along with young adults, Hispanics and African‐Americans are more likely to go online wirelessly. According to the report "Half of all African‐American adults (48%) have used their cell phone to access the internet, compared with 40% of Hispanic adults and just 31% of white adults."

Media Usage Way Up for Kids and Teens, but Particularly for Black and Latino Children

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently released a report that shows that the amount of time young people are spending with entertainment media has increased signifcantly over the past five years, rising from 6.21 hours to 7.38. When taking into account "media multitasking," the number actually adds up to 10:45 minutes per day.

Among other interesting findings, the results of the study show that mobile media and social networking are driving this increased consumption, and that Black and Hispanic children spend much more time with media than White children do - 13:00 hours of of total media exposure for Hispanics, 12:59 for Blacks, and 8:36 for Whites.

The news release says that "top online activities include social networking (:22 a day), playing games (:17), and visiting video sites such as YouTube (:15).  Three-quarters (74%) of all 7th - 12th graders say they have a profile on a social networking site."

Source: PRNewswire

Coke Taps Latinos Desire for Self-Improvement

In an interview conducted by Joe Kutchera, Reinaldo Padua, the assistant VP of Hispanic Marketing at Coca-Cola America talked about a new educational marketing initiative. 

In essence, when Hispanic customers buy coke, they receive a bilingual dictionary and a DVD with the first lesson from the Inglés sin Barreras collection. Thereafter, they can register and accumulate points and redeem these for one of the 12 volumes of the collection.

By doing its research, Coke was able to identify that for Latinos, happiness means being able to pursue their dreams, and one important factor in being able to do so in the U.S. is to have strong English language skills.

The initial results of thein-store and mobile campaign, "look very encouraging" said Mr. Padua. " The feedback we have gotten from consumers has been very positive. The feedback from our employees, our most important stakeholders, has also been positive. They love it and understand the value that it provides to the community. Customers also love the idea that we are helping the community in a tangible way."

Source: Media Post

Citibank Launches Citi Mobile en Español for Smartphone Users

Seeking to gain and advantage on their competitors in the mobile online banking space and make further inroads into the growing Hispanic market, Citibank recently launched Citi Mobile en Español. In addition to to growing their client base, Citi hopes that this strategy will help with client retention as approximately 25 percent of their clients are Hispanic.

According to Pew Research, 50 percent of all Hispanics who speak English use a mobile device to access the Internet. Pew found that many of these users are bi-lingual and prefer doing business in Spanish, depending on the specific task or situation is, and that 30 percent go online daily through their mobile phones.

Source: American Banking News

Using Mobile Technology to Make a Difference in the Hispanic Community

Jonathan Spalter, chairman of Mobile Future, recently published a brilliant article that discusses how mobile technology can be used to make a difference in some key areas that affect the Hispanic community.

Referring to a recent study done by Mobile Future entitled Hispanic Broadband Access: Making the Most of the Mobile, Connected Future, Jonathan points to data that shows that more than half of America's Hispanic population is using the mobile Internet as compared to one third of whites.  They also use more minutes and own more cell phones than other ethnic groups. 

Recognizing this opportunity, Mr. Spalter and this report highlight the importance of leveraging Hispanic's use of mobile technology in three key areas: health care, education and economic opportunity.

Read his full article to learn more about specific suggestions in these areas and download the report.