Mobile Phones Fail To Win Surfer Support
There have been plenty of studies like this one, but the latest one confirms that there's been little change. Most mobile phone users don't seem to care about accessing data on their mobile phones. Only about 8% of UK users (where mobile phone use for things like text messaging is much higher than in the US) used their phones to access internet data. For most people, they don't really see the point, when they can get to an internet-connected PC without too much delay. The tradeoffs of immediate access with a much slower, flakier, pricier connection displayed on a tiny screen just don't seem worth it. What a shocker. The problem is that mobile phone companies haven't realize that people aren't going to jump on the 3G bandwagon to access the same thing they can get at home. Getting people to use the data side of their mobile phone requires letting them do something special that they can't do at home on their PC. That means using the mobile phone for connecting to others when you're out and about and perhaps location-based offerings. People already have the internet, they're not going to rush to their mobile phones just to get the same info.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team