Fashion Phones More Important to Men Than Women - Report

A recently completed IDC study has concluded that mobile users perceive they derive one of the following sets of benefits from using mobile phones - safety and security, productivity and convenience, or style and status. Thus, while some people relish the increased productivity and convenience of having a mobile phone, others are merely satisfied with their heightened sense of safety and security when carrying these devices. Fortunately for mobile phone vendors and wireless service providers offering emerging value-added feature sets and services, a full constituency of mobile users thrive on the style and status associated with owning the latest full-featured phones.

The study also reveals a number of other corollaries about mobile phone users' perceptions about their phones, such as:

• Overall, productivity and convenience benefits are paramount to more users compared to other fundamental benefits, such as safety and security or style and status.
• The imperatives of style- and status-conscious mobile phone users are more numerous than other types of users -- overall, style and status seekers want the latest devices with new features and services.
• Safety and security seekers are minimalists -- that is, they are more typically price-conscious users who prefer easy-to-use phones with few enhancements.
• Males, more than females, rate style and status as important mobile phone benefits while females regard safety and security as more valuable.

"To capitalize on market voids, mobile phone vendors and wireless service providers must sustain technological innovations and creative marketing programs," says Dana Thorat, senior research analyst in IDC's Mobile User program. "However, in doing so, marketers must attempt to gain a better understanding of what makes mobile users tick - that is, identifying and satisfying ever-changing user demands in order to serve increasingly diverse and fragmented markets shaped by differing values, beliefs, needs, wants, and expectations.""

Posted to the site on 12th January 2005