10 days ago I promised that the founder of Hole19 Golf GPS mobile application, Anthony Douglas will share with us, his thoughts about the golf mobile application industry, and in general about the mobile usage trends. Due to the complexity of the topic there will be 2 or 3 posts from him in this topic. Today is the first part:
“For the last twenty years, the golf industry in Europe has enjoyed an average of 6% annual growth in terms of golf participation. While in the last 5 years, golf participation growth rates have been modest to say the least (at 1-2%) and 2011 marked the first year where the golf industry has experienced a downturn (source: KPMG, Golf Business Community).
In the meantime, a completely different industry has experienced exceptional growth; I am talking about mobile. In the US, smartphones are used by over 50.4% of consumers, with Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android platform accounting for over 80% of the market share.
The rest of the world is not far behind, and research suggests that smartphones will fly past the 50% mark by 2013.
Now when joining these two industries together, a huge opportunity presents itself. A recent study (2011) by the National Golf Foundation provides some interesting facts:
- 61% of golfers own a smartphone
- 25% of golfers read golf articles on their mobile phone
- 84% researched golf equipment online and 4.4 million bought a golf item online
- 5.9 million booked a tee-time using a 3rd party website
- 2.4 million golfers have downloaded a golf related app (US, 2011)
- 25% of golfers that downloaded apps use an app to measure yardages at golf courses
This data should not come as a surprise to you and should motivate you to start thinking about how mobile can help the game of golf grow. I will discuss specific mobile applications and their advantages in my next post.”