A global survey by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found that whilst most consumers are currently dissatisfied with the mobile commerce applications on offer – one in four owners of mobile devices stopped using m-commerce applications after the first few attempts – most current and potential users believe mobile services will play an important role in their daily lives in the future.
Problems cited by users included slowness, high costs, difficult navigation, unreliability and difficulties typing on a primarily numeric phone keypad. However, 82% of those currently using such devices predicted that, within three years, they will have become invaluable in areas such as travel planning and 81% believed that they will have become part of everyday life, used to perform daily activities, such as sending emails, gathering information, and shopping.
Based on these responses, BCG predict that global m-commerce will generate B2C revenues of $100 billion by 2003. This depends on operators and equipment manufacturers addressing the issues raised by users currently in order to improve the services they are providing.
