Personalisation: Mobile phones are mainly used by a single person and are often considered an intimate accessory and a status symbol expressing individuality, especially by the teenage group and the youth.  The various ways they use to personalise their mobile phones include choosing a particular brand, size, colour, display logo and ring tone. It is continuously carried by them within reach and is an important part of their daily lives.

For business users, as well, the mobile phone has similarly become a highly personal instrument. They also individualise their mobile phones by saving contacts, messages and important dates. Furthermore, the user of each mobile phone and each user's personal instrument are identifiable through the SIM (subscriber identity module) card. The mobile phone therefore appears to be the ideal medium for direct and personalised customer communication.

Interactivity: Being a highly interactive medium, mobile phone enable the recipient of a message to respond immediately, affecting the communication actively. It allows bi-directional mode of communication and direct dialogue between the advertiser and the potential customer.

Localisation: Mobile marketing has a major advantage of "localisation". Location-based mobile phone services on the Global Positioning System  (GPS) or Cell of Origin (COO) platform to enable trigerring impulse purchasing or point of sale marketing by adapting and aiming the marketing effort to the place wherever the user might be.

Currently the full potential of these kinds of 'push-services' are yet to be realised in India, due to the under-developed positioning technologies. However, location-based 'pull-services' on active customer demand for offers from close-by product and service providers eg., (eg, hospitals, restaurants, hotels, pubs, malls, superstores, petrol refilling stations, or ATMs etc) are operational in some areas of the world. This makes it easier for the customer to select the best option and consequently increases the chance of  his willingness to spend and his satisfaction. The development of positioning technologies is expected to boost mobile commerce application to an unprecedented high.

Ubiquity: Through mobile phone communication, companies can reach out to the potential customers anytime and anywhere, round the clock. Usually mobile phone users carry their handsets with them at all times and may leave it on, on 'standby' mode for an average of 14 hours a day.

Entertainment value: Customers are generally more receptive towards commercial communication through mobile phones due to its high information, storage and often entertainment values.

Viral marketing: Marketing campaigns through mobile phones also have the potential of being driven by 'viral effects'. A commercial content when received as a forwarded message from a friend or acquaintance who is supposedly a 'neutral sender' and not a 'self-interested sender', has  more chance of being received positively and reforwarded to others for information dissemination. It helps the campaign by enlarging its reach and credibility. 

Already, marketing mesages that used to be sent as emails are being routed over the mobile. Moreover, mobile usage has created a new category in the e-marketer's chain, that of telecallers and direct selling agents who rely on person to person sales pitches over the cusromer's mobile phone.

Technology advisory and market research firm Gartner estimates there will be 2.6 billion mobile phones in use by the end of 2009; in 2006 the global mobile population was nearly equal to 80 per cent of the world's population, and this is expected to increase to 90 per cent by the year 2010.

The entire Asia / Pacific segment of the mobile phone market, represents 25 per cent of the worldwide market today, Gartner says, predicting that this will increase to 33 per cent by 2009.

On a numerical basis, India is the largest growth market, adding about 6 million mobile phones every month. With 256.55 million mobile phones, market penetration in the country is still low at 22.52 per cent. India expects to reach 500 million subscribers by end of 2010.

Evidently, mobile phones are poised to ring in lot of relationship-marketing in consumers' lives, offering mass produced products and services on a customised level.