News

Downtown goes digital

Now the 7th largest city in the U.S. can fit into the palm of your hand with Downtown Alliance San Antonio’s new free mobile app for smartphones. Based on the non-profit’s website, www.downtownsanantonio.org, the app features a downtown business directory with maps, GPS enabled directions, events, mobile coupons and more.

Downtown Alliance, an organization dedicated to making downtown a better place to live, work, shop, eat and be entertained, partnered with local leading mobile technology firm BiBiSi to offer the application for free.

Downtown Alliance President, Ben Brewer, commented, “We are always looking for additional ways to improve the downtown experience, and getting to and around downtown are frequent questions for tourists and locals alike.” With Mayor Castro declaring the next ten years the “Decade of Downtown,” Brewer and his staff saw an opportunity to better prepare downtown for the next ten years through mobile technology.

According to Nielsen Wire, “Smartphones are expected to overtake feature phones in the U.S. by 2011, and the popularity of mobile apps will only grow.” Currently, there is a 99% penetration rate for phones with SMS, or texting, capabilities and 40% penetration for smart phones. The mobile app developed by BiBiSi offers an SMS component that can provide assistance even if the user can’t access the internet through their phone. To access the app, users can text the word “downtown” to 45384. They will immediately receive a text message back with a link to the app, formatted to fit their cell phone model. Soon, users will also be able to type in the Downtown Alliance url (www.downtownsa.org) into their mobile browser to access the app.

BiBiSi Mobile President Enrique Garza explained "The unique thing about this project is that we didn't just make it work as an application for one carrier, we configured it to work with the majority of smartphones across all the major carriers, which we feel is the future of mobile applications."

The app will continue to grow and evolve to fit the needs of downtown. For example, future plans for the app include self-guided historical tours, real-time parking spot counts and last minute specials. Brewer concluded, “It is our goal that this becomes the go-to resource for everyone in downtown San Antonio, whether they live off of South Flores, in Stone Oak, San Francisco, or Sao Paulo.”

Statistics about mobile:

• The San Antonio Convention and Visitors Bureau states that approximately 25 million people visited San Antonio last year. Nielsen Ratings for Mobile Usage claim that as of January 2010, there is a 40% smartphone penetration in the United States. Combining these two statistics, it is fair to assume that this year, there will be approximately 10 million people that have smartphones coming to San Antonio. · 99% of cell phones have SMS or texting capabilities.
• By 2006, 2.3 billion people had smart phones, which was twice the number of people using the internet.
• By 2008, the typical U.S. cell phone subscriber sent and received 357 text messages a month.
•  90% of all text messages are read by cell phone users; whereas email messages often reach only a 20-50% open rate.

Downtown Alliance San Antonio is a membership based non-profit organization dedicated to making downtown a better place to live, work, shop, eat, play and stay. For more information, visit: http://www.downtownsa.org

BIBISI, LLC is a leading mobile marketing company located in San Antonio and specializing in the delivery of all types of digital content to mobile phones including SMS, mobile applications, and mobile websites. For more information, visit us on the web at www.bibisicorp.com