What Your Mobile Phone Can Say About You

Your choice of mobile phone can say a lot about you and your self image,according to the latest Panorama Mobile Customer Monitor, released byNielsen MediaResearch. The Panorama research findings reveal that Nokia's dominance of the mobilephone handset marketin Australia was under attack from a number of competitors. The most successfulof these wasMotorola, which lifted its market share from 8.4% in the year to December 05 to12.2% in the year toDecember 06.

Sony Ericsson and Samsung were also gaining share rapidly, improving by 2.4percentage pointsand 1.7 percentage points respectively.

Although these gains did not undermine Nokia's market dominance, the companyhas dropped by7.7 percentage points in the past year; the second consecutive year of losses -and it appears thatthe momentum is clearly with its smaller competitors.

Nielsen Media Research Associate Director, Mr Jody Loughlin, said "all makesof mobile phone hada wide spread of customer types, but some customers were more attracted tocertain brands than others."

"It's clear that many Australians chose a phone that says something aboutthem, and that the type ofmobile you.re seen with could even be more important than whether you.re withTelstra, Optus,Vodafone or one of the other major carriers"

The research found the following brand characteristics among the top fivemakes of mobile phone:

• Nokia - the choice of family-minded, middle aged managers
• Motorola - favoured by fashion conscious under 24s
• Sony Ericsson - for ambitious young men trying to make their mark
• LG - favoured by mums
• Samsung - for young women focused on their career

He said .the brand associations and preferences by lifestyle groups fordifferent mobiles is animportant insight for Telcos, particularly as they struggled to find points ofdifference in their offer toconsumers.

"The opportunities for Telcos to find competitive advantages are shrinking.Our Panorama researchshows that customer satisfaction with mobile calls (in terms of the total ofvery and quite satisfiedcustomers) is much the same from one carrier to the next, and price competitionhas led mostcarriers to introduce capped cost call plans with generous allowances."

Even 3G is now common to all the major carriers, with the real battle in 3Gfocused on convincingconsumers they actually need mobile television and other new services.

"Against this background, the perceived image associated with different brandsof handsets thatTelcos choose to bundle with their services may be far more important in winningmarket share thanpreviously understood," Mr Loughlin said.

He added that the arrival of Apple's mobile phone in Australia in 2008 wouldput a sharper focus onhandsets as a means of creating competitive advantage and boosting revenue.

The top five suppliers of mobile phones in the year to December 06 were Nokia(56.9%), Motorola(12.2%), Sony Ericsson (8.4%), LG (7.1%) and Samsung (6.0%)."

Posted to the site on 30th March 2007