Joy, joy, joy… mobiThinking loves surveys, reports and market projections. But so often we get overexcited about the optimistic outlook for the mobile web; then become disillusioned when we start to dig under the surface: so how many people did you actually survey? Which client exactly is getting this brilliant ROI? Why can’t I see the full study?
We’ve just read three good ones, and what’s more, they are user-focused. Heaven.
The first is a paid-for report from the Strategy Analytics Wireless Media Lab. It gives a good indication of not only what mobile users in US and Western Europe are prepared to pay for (outside of the standard price plan), and how much they will pay.
- What do they want?
The research reinforces the theory that the key to winning mobile customers is utility-based service, and that the king of utility is maps and directions. On both sides of the Atlantic, 40-50 percent of 2,800 respondents were prepared to pay for maps/directions (top in the US), multimedia messaging (top in Europe), email and browsing the Internet (about 40 percent in US and UK).
Outside the top four, there was some variety in tastes, with more US users prepared to pay for ring-tones, caller tunes and video calls, while the Europeans favored radio, video calls, MP3 downloads and mobile banking.
How much will they pay? We hear you shout
In the US, users were prepared to pay between $3.50 and $4.00 extra per month for mobile TV, video calls, browsing the Internet, maps and directions and emails. In Europe, users were only prepared to pay over $3.50 for maps and directions and browsing the Internet, with mobile TV and video calls at just under $3.50.
Who are they?
In Europe, 16-24 year olds are slightly more likely to pay than 25-34 year olds, with the opposite case in the US, but 16-24 year olds are prepared to pay more (significantly so in the US). There were interesting variations between European nations.
What else?
The most commonly used handset manufacturer in Europe was Nokia (38 percent), and Motorola (29 percent) in the US. Verizon Wireless was the most common operator in the US, while European operators varied with country.
There were dramatic differences between prepay and contract between countries.*
* We’re told by Beepmarketing, managing director, Helen Keegan that mobile Internet penetration is held up in countries, such as the UK, where prepay dominates.
What are they up to?
MobiThinking also liked a survey by Azuki Systems of 275 US mobile users. It’s never going to be as in-depth as an analyst report, but is considerably better than your average freebie.
52 percent of those surveyed use their mobile phone to access the mobile web and 50 percent to access their e-mails, with the 35-44 year-olds the most active. 39 percent spend more than 2 hours on the mobile web a week.
Why aren’t they doing more?
Interestingly, 80 percent of Azuki respondents said they wished it were easier to access information from the Internet, on their mobile phones, and 79 percent said they wished it were easier to access rich media (video, music).
The main (perceived) obstacles to using rich media were:
– It takes too long to download/play the media
– It’s too hard to find and difficult to navigate through the content I like
– Media content isn’t available or formatted to work on my phone
Where are they going online?
This month’s excellent State of the Mobile Web report (pdf) from Opera Software documents the top 10 visited mobile sites in the top 10 countries for Opera browser: Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, US, South Africa, UK, Poland and Egypt.
Surprise, surprise, Google does extremely well everywhere except Russia. Generally search, social networking and news appear to be the big draws for mobile users.
The report also focuses on Africa. A continent we’d like to look at in more detail, when time allows.
Do these statistics ring true or should we have taken them with a bigger pitch of salt? Please comment below.
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