US Mobile Usage Grows
A new US mobile phone user survey, carried out by Azuki Systems, saw over 54% of respondents say their mobile phone usage had increased by more than 25% over the past two years, while one in five said it had increased by more than 50%.
Despite increased adoption, almost 80% of those surveyed said they wished it were easier to access the internet on their mobile phones, and an equal percentage stated they wished it were easier to access rich media on their mobile phones.
The majority of those surveyed pointed to a number of current obstacles to enjoying rich media on mobile. For example, 69% felt that the long time to download and/or play media ranked among their top three barriers, and 66% felt that difficulties finding and navigating to relevant content was a top three inhibitor. A number of shortcomings were also identified for iPhone and BlackBerry users.
Jim Ricotta, CEO of Azuki Systems, said: “Mobile device technology, as well as mobile content and application development, is on the rise. As a result, the mobile experience is getting better with access to more content, and mobile adoption is growing at a rapid speed.
“However, as the survey results indicated, there is still work to be done in order to deliver truly usable mobile content to today’s mobile devices. Mobile requires a different consumption and interaction model where, unlike the desktop, it is less about browsing and more about glancing to ‘snack’ on media.”
The survey – conducted with over 275 US mobile consumers of varying demographic backgrounds – also found that 33% talk on their mobile phones more than 10 hours per week, while of the 79% who send text messages from their phones, 29% do so for more than two hours/week.
A recent report from the Nielsen Company revealed that the average mobile subscriber in the US sent and received more SMS text messages than mobile telephone calls during Q2 2008.
This was the second consecutive quarter in which the average number of text messages was significantly higher than the average number of calls (see Text Messaging Overtakes Mobile Voice Calls).
The Azuki survey results also show that social networking is starting to become more popular on the third screen. Twenty-five percent of mobile users are accessing social networking sites from their mobile devices with one in seven respondents between the ages of 23 to 34 doing so for more than two hours/week.
Almost 70% of mobile users surveyed would prefer mobile ads in exchange for free access to mobile content.
Research from TNS recently revealed that mobile providers looking to boost their revenues through content downloads and advertising are in for a rough ride (see Ad-Averse Mobile Users Will Pay To Avoid Advertising).
While the vast majority (56%) believe that content downloads to mobile phones should be free of charge, there is a growing number of consumers that are so averse to advertising that they are now willing to pay a premium in order to avoid it.