Young, mobile, but not yet online-News-Tech & Web-TimesOnline
A study of young phone users suggests that networks face an uphill battle in getting the MySpace generation to use the internet on their mobiles
Source: Young, mobile, but not yet online-News-Tech & Web-TimesOnline
Jonathan Richards
They are more competent and regular texters than their parents will ever be, and have started to use their phones for a whole range of functions — buying ringtones, downloading computer games, social networking — that older generations scarcely know exist, let alone want to try.
But young mobile phone customers are still relatively slow to embrace internet-based services, and networks will have to reduce the cost of such services significantly, and speed up their delivery, if this most impatient of generations is to be brought online while on the move.
That is the message from a large survey of young European phone users, and one that will resonate with operators who have been racing in recent months to announce "tie-ups" with internet brands such as Google and MySpace in an attempt to make "mobile internet" more relevant to web-savvy teenagers.
Of the more than 7,000 12 to 24-year-olds surveyed by Forrester Research, 84 per cent use a mobile phone — in line with the rate of 85 per cent for the general population.
The average young customer spends €25 (£17) a month on their bill — about 20 per cent more than the €21 (£14) spent by the wider population — and the majority of additional spending after the monthly contract goes on text messages, ringtones, picture messages and television voting.
The growth of mobile internet use, by comparison, remains sluggish. More than half of respondents said that they never browsed the internet, and only 8 per cent said that they used it once a week or more. When it came to daily use, the figure dropped to 1 per cent.
A separate study by Q Research suggested only 3 per cent of young people aged 11 to 25 had downloaded music directly to their mobile phone, with the high cost of doing so the main dissuading factor. By comparison, two thirds of those aged 20 to 24 spend up to £10 a month on music downloads to their computer, and nearly half of those under 16 spend a similar amount.
Analysts said that the figures could partly be explained by data costs, which remain relatively high for mobile phones, but its was equally important that networks have, until now, offered mobile internet services under their own names, such as Vodafone Live!, rather than pairing with companies that younger customers know from the fixed internet, such as MySpace.
Ben Wood, an analyst with CCS Insight, said: "Phone operators have gone from believing they can deliver everything themselves to realising that if a teenager wants to share photos, they're going to do it on Flickr, not via a Vodafone picture gallery."
Graham Brown, the chief executive of Wireless World Forum, which publishes mobileYouth, an annual survey of phone use among young people, said: "For the first time, networks are realising that their core competency is not in front-end services. They’ve understood that they should be focused on providing the platform, while leaving the fun stuff to the content industry."
Mr Brown said that usability issues, such as the slow rate of downloads and screen size, also remained a problem, and that it had been only recently that users have not had to enter "https://" before the name of website, which meant that finding the average URL involved 40 key pushes.
Michel de Lussanet, the vice-president of research at Forrester and one of the co-authors of the report, said: "Mobile phone companies have always been keen to offer internet services, but they’ve forgotten that people don't interact with their phones the same way that they do with their computers.
"Mobile TV, for instance, was a common offering early on — largely because it was technically possible — but operators didn't consider that the image wasn't like the one customers were used to in their lounge."
A Vodafone spokeswoman said that the results of the study “made sense”, and added that the company was “addressing the issue” by announcing deals with familiar internet brands. She said: “Our strategy is to encourage people who have used services such as MySpace on their computers to transfer that experience to their mobile."
The cost of accessing the internet on a mobile phone was coming down, analysts agreed, and with the advent of offerings such as 3's X-Series, which for £5 or £10 allows "unlimited" access to internet services such as Skype, as well as more tie-ups with brands that are familiar to teenagers, mobile internet use would grow.
The customer, however, remains to be convinced. Despite 61 per cent of young people surveyed saying that they had internet on their phone, only 34 per cent wanted it on their next phone — in comparison with 65 per cent who wanted an MP3 player and 44 per cent who wanted Bluetooth.
February 19, 2007 at 12:54 AM in | Permalink
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