“Children and family focused iPhone applications are gaining in popularity and have become big business” said Jason Petralia, CEO of People Operating Technology, a New York-based iPhone application publisher. “We’re happy that Greystripe is pioneering research into this market.”

Highlights include:

• Over 59% of iPhone moms let their children use their iPhone with 41% downloading entertainment applications 20% downloading educational apps specifically for their kids.
• 89.25% use their phone for entertainment, whether this is listening to music, browsing the Internet or using various entertainment apps.
• 96% are involved in their household purchasing decisions, with 40% being the sole decision maker.

The complete report is available as PDF.

Besides networking, the main topic of the evening was the presentation of the “Mobile Marketing Challenge” results – a couple of agencies were pitching concepts for mobile marketing campaigns.

Even when working for 3united/VeriSign Austria (now Mobile Messaging Solutions), I was not really involved in any mobile marketing activities, so I was curious to see the contestant’s proposals.

I was surprised to find that most of the presentations focused on traditional SMS campaigns, or WAP/mobile portals/banners – none of them had suggested the use or implementation of any mobile apps. Twitter and Facebook were mentioned by some, but played no major role in the campaign layout.

Maybe it was naive for me to expect a certain level of innovation – but, come on, SMS?! That’s soooo 90s…