11 MOBILE MARKETING FUTURE TRENDS Iacob CĂTOIU, Professor Ph.D. Faculty of Marketing The Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest Daniel Adrian GÂRDAN, Lecturer Ph.D. Faculty of Marketing and International Affairs Spiru Haret University Doru Lucian GÂRDAN, Software designer ST – Ericsson, Holland Abstract The present article proposes an introspection into the field of a new marketing specialization – mobile marketing. The concept mainly refers to all marketing activities related to the new communication channel – Short Message Service, Multimedia Messaging Service, and internet access from mobile phone. The article provides, at the same time, a marketing perspective about future trends of mobile marketing and mobile media, and also a technical perspective related to the future mobile communication technologies in the field – the LTE (Long Term Evolution) – cellular communication system optimized to support packet-switched data services to enable mobile broadband. The conclusions of the article focus on the relevance of mobile marketing, techniques efficiency related to brand promotion, changing consumers attitude and the development of such techniques imposed by the new mobile communication system Key-words: mobile marketing, long term evolution, broadband, brand awareness, consumer attitude JEL Classification: M 31 , O 31 Introduction The global penetration of mobile phones increased significantly from 79.1% to 87.2%, between 2004 and 2007 (MobileYouth 2005) 1 . The same source stated for 2010, the percentage of penetration level in using mobile phones among young population (14 to 29 years of age) is between 49% in Uganda, up to 246% in Qatar (from this respect Romania places 13 th with a rate of 140% penetration among young users). With such a high percentages of the world’s population owning a mobile phone, marketers from all over the world have the ability to communicate offers directly to the target audience whenever and wherever they may be, offering much more personalised services. 1 www.mobileyouthreport.com.