Twitter is planning to make mobile services accessible even in the absence of Internet connection.
According to J.P. Morgan estimates, Twitter’s market penetration in the U.S. is around 22 percent, while its market penetration worldwide is just roughly nine percent.
AllThingsD reported the plan of the company to augment its global market shares by signing deals for prime mobile phone placement and reaching untapped audiences in others.
The company’s mean revenue outside the U.S. is just a fraction of its mean revenue inside the U.S., so increasing the company’s user base outside the U.S. is very significant to make up for the difference, and this can be done by increasing its international market as fast as possible.
In able to increase its global shares, Twitter has partnered with smaller regional telecommunications carriers that would market deals, like using Twitter for free, to new data plan customers.
Early this year, one of Pakistan’s biggest network carriers, Mobilink, has started offering similar deal to their pre-paid customers.
Through this marketing strategy, Twitter could have increased users, while network carriers can benefit from this by having increased data plan sign ups.
Twitter is also striving to get installed on phones that are not Internet-enabled, like what they aim with its partnership with U20pia mobile, a Singapore-based startup.
Sumesh Menon, co-founder of U2opia Mobile, told Reuters, “For a lot of end users in the emerging markets, it’s going to be their first Twitter experience.”
GigaOm also reported that Twitter is not just targeting “ancient” cellular phones. In its partnership with Deutsche Telekom, the company will get top billing on some smartphone homescreens through a widget that will allow users to “keep up with Twitter right from their homescreen.”
That proposed plan will primarily run in countries like Croatia, Greece, Netherlands, Romania, and in Germany where the site hardly made a dent in subscriptions.
