BARCELONA, Spain--Facebook was awarded the first-ever Master of Mobile award at a special ceremony held by multi-channel communications platform provider Oxygen8 at the Mobile World Congress, here.
The social network was the outright winner in what Oxygen8 said was a "first of its kind" poll of UK consumers to discover which mobile brands and services are the most popular. Some 8,500 consumers were quizzed during the research, which was conducted by UK consultancy mobileSquared in conjunction with digital data collection company Lightspeed GMI during 2014.
Facebook won the overall Master of Mobile award with 8.1 per cent of the vote in research that covered 500 separate brands across multiple categories. The company garnered 60 per cent of the votes in the social category.
Amazon placed second overall with 6.7 per cent of total votes, and won the Master of Shopping award with 21 per cent of the votes in that category. The Master of Banking category was won by Barclays, on 17 per cent.
At a roundtable event to present the results during MWC, Oxygen8 CMO Rob Townsend said it is remarkable that consumer research "based around what's your favourite mobile brand,…feature or service, and why" has not been done before.
Shopping was rated the top category by 21.2 per cent of respondents, with banking second on 17.6 per cent and social media third with 16.6 per cent.
Townsend noted that in terms of brands "banking and financial services feature very heavily…from the top 50 upwards, [and] certainly the top 20."
Darren Foulds, MD of Barclays Mobile Banking and Pingit, explained that the bank's mobile service is "driving a higher level of engagement with consumers. "Where a traditional customer "would engage with us six times online, [and] twice with the branch" each month, with mobile "it's 26 times a month," he explained.
In addition 50 per cent of the bank's customer base is now "using mobile as their first call" rather than transitioning over from the bank's legacy online banking service, Foulds said.
Oxygen8 also revealed that voice has dropped out of the top 10 most-used mobile services in the UK.
Messaging was the most popular service, used on a daily basis by 90 per cent of respondents in a poll of 1,000 UK mobile users. Mobile web browsing (84 per cent) followed, with email in third (83 per cent).
For more:
- download Oxygen8's white paper
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