3G 'Near Bottom of the Mobile Phone Wishlist'

Despite mobile phone providers' endeavours to recruit 3G customers, third generation technology remains a low priority for mobile users across the globe, with cost the biggest deterrent, according to Global Technology Insight (GTI), the massive annual mobile study by TNS.

The study identified little increase in 3G technology usage amongst consumers, who view the offer of mobile TV and surfing the net as 'costly and unnecessary services' according to the agency. Cost puts almost a quarter of global users off using 3G (23% say it is the main obstacle) and Wi-Fi technology (22%). A similar proportion see are put off downloading songs to their mobile and surfing the internet on their phone primarily by the cost.

Other elements such as speed of the network, battery life, screen size, image quality and memory can also be obstacles for many services, but their impact pales in comparison to that of cost.

TNS says 3G and Wi-Fi capabilities 'have fallen close to the bottom of the mobile phone feature 'wishlist'' with fewer people prioritising them as an aspiration today (4%) than a year ago (7%). Fewer than half the 20% of mobile users with 3G phone actually use their 3G capability – the same is true of the 26% who have Wi-Fi enabled phones, and the 21% with mobile TV-capable phones.

The most popular price plans for 3G and Wi-Fi enabled services are 'pay once for unlimited use', 'fixed monthly sum for unlimited use' or having the service bundled as part of the overall contract – but many customers are reluctantly paying per kilobyte used or paying each time a service is used.

Hanis Harun, Global Director, TNS Technology, comments: 'Given that cost is such a key obstacle to the adoption of more advanced mobile services, mobile operators must provide pricing regimes which are fixed for unlimited use, transparent and affordable... Cost is the quick fix and should provide fast usage uplift especially amongst those services already found interesting by consumers, such as songs downloads and realtime TV.'

TNS is online at www.tns-global.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.

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