Hyper-Local Content Is Key—Especially Social Media: A Cross-Country Comparison of Mobile Content in Brazil, China, India, and Nigeria

Abstract

but they are now increasingly making inroads in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Consumers across emerging markets are keen to use mobile apps, but they face significant barriers. For instance, more than one-third of consumers in developing nations find content too expensive, and app stores, which usually are driven by mobile networks or brands such as Google and Apple, require access to credit or banking facilities. Translation presents another major obstacle; many mobile users cannot find the content they are searching for—or any content at all—in their local language. Consumers in emerging markets expect to interact primarily with highly localized mobile social networks and health services, followed by music and entertainment content, and then gaming. This is not to say that news and business content are less important—consumer interaction with all types of content must be taken seriously in order to understand attitudes toward and perceptions of mobile. Upstream’s “The Next Mobile Frontier Report”—a survey of mobile consumers in Brazil, China, India, Nigeria (and Vietnam)—ranked content preferences as follows: social networking (82%), music (81%), news (78%), gaming (65%), lifestyle (54%), books (53%), business or financial services (46%), educa-