Half of Brits Have Not Changed Phone Usage Patterns in Past 5 Years

Voice and text remain the ‘killerÃ' applications worldwide as mobile phone users across the globe admit to using their devices for the same things that they did in 2003. Research commissioned by telecom application connectivity specialist AppTrigger also showed that despite advances in mobile phone functionality and the launch of devices such as AppleÃ's iPhone, almost a third (30%) of Americans and Canadians and more than half of UK adults (57%) insist that the way in which they use their mobiles has not changed for five years.

The study shows that service providers still have a mountain to climb when it comes to encouraging the adoption of new applications and increasing their revenue opportunities. While 50 per cent of US and Canadian respondents use voicemail and almost a third (31%) use SMS at least once a day, just a fifth surf the mobile web at least once a day and 12 per cent play mobile games. Fourty-nine percent also admitted that they never watch videos on their phone and 43 percent never use their device to listen to music.

The results from China also reveal extremely low adoption rates of new applications such as Instant Financial Messaging Systems (FMS) only five per cent, Phone Number Keeper at six per cent, Mobile Secretary and GPS-based services, with usage of just nine per cent and six per cent respectively.

Despite low usage rates, there is clear consumer demand for new mobile services as more than half (56%) of Chinese mobile users hope their service providers continue to launch new and improved applications and almost three quarters of Americans and Canadians (74%) want additional services on their devices as well.

"These survey results highlight that voice still remains the "killer application", despite the growth of some data services", commented Ronald Gruia, Principal Analyst for Emerging Telecoms at Frost & Sullivan. "Mobile users still are relying quite heavily on voice-based value added services, and this still represents a very important revenue stream for service providers. Therefore, operators need to leverage their existing revenue generating assets with new IP services to create and push out new innovative services more quickly", added Gruia.

Patrick Fitzgerald, SVP of Global Sales and Marketing at AppTrigger comments: "Mobile OperatorÃ's most strategic asset is their large, existing revenue-producing voice subscriber base and their inevitable challenge is to move these subscribers into new service opportunities. Operators will be dependent on services such as mobile Internet, games, music, video downloads, location-based services and TV and it is essential that these next generation applications are rolled out quickly and promoted to customers. However, the carrier marketÃ's inability to maximize ARPU is the residual effect of a greater short coming. If operators were equipped to continue building ARPU on voice services, taking advantage of new and old, they would be able to leverage "voice" as a feature to create new applications for incremental service revenue."

With the context of an ever evolving mobile landscape, as this research revealed, voicemail and text messaging remain the most desired and frequently used applications. From the operatorÃ's standpoint, consistently introducing new, advanced offerings that leverage and compliment their existing voice services is critical to remain competitive in the mobile landscape. Therefore, the introduction and uptake of new applications needs to improve.

AppTrigger commissioned a survey of 1,850 mobile users across the UK, North America, Canada and China.

Posted to the site on 3rd December 2008