160 Characters has posted news about a new survey that should make mobile content providers quake: according to recent research, more than half of people who used mobile data services for the first time during the World Cup won't use it again. The key identified barriers were pricing, ease of set up and use.
According to the survey of 999 adults carried out during the final weekend of the competition, an encouraging 29% of world cup mobile data users have used a service for the first time but worryingly for operators 44% claimed they would not use the service again.Pricing was a big issue with only 49% of consumers satisfied with the cost of the mobile data service they used. On top of this 19% believe that if mobile data services were easier to set up and use they would have been encouraged to use the services on offer during 2006 football world cup.
As a long time user and provider of mobile data services, I'm not surprised. I am technically savvy when it comes to mobile handsets, yet I still have difficulty getting connected to the mobile web at times, especially with a new phone. Carlo's been going on about this for a long time, and I entirely agree – if a mobile phone 'just works' for making calls, why can't it 'just work' for mobile browsing?
July 15th, 2006 at 6:22 am
On a side note, the dotMobi mTLD (mobile top level domain) has just been released and is in the sunrise registration period…the promise of dotMobi is to ensure that those sites with dotMobi extension will be tuned to mobile browsing…
one can expect a number of .mobi web sites – those that conform with standards for mobile browsing – to be online starting Oct 2006
More info on dotMobi can be found at Mobinomy.com – http://www.mobinomy.com , this site also plans to start a dotMobi directory soon
Ec from IT, Software Database @ http://www.eit.in