American Mobile Users Still Very Voice Centric

Fri, Mar 5th 2004 12:45pm — Mike Masnick

This probably isn't a huge surprise to most people in the industry, but a good reminder that for all the discussions on new wireless data services, US users are still very voice centric when it comes to using their mobile phones. 90 to 95% of the time they use their phones for voice. The trend is in the right direction, though. Meanwhile, in places like the UK where text messaging is second to breathing on the activities list, people spend twice as much time using their phones for data than for voice. The rest of the article, though, focuses on all the content providers drooling over what they believe are the mobile data opportunities. We have a bit of a disagreement going on around here over what's going to catch on first, but it still seems companies would be much smarter to focus on interactive applications (like messaging and games) than on straight "broadcast" style content. If people are going to use their mobile phones for data, it has to be for a reason - and simply replicating TV isn't it.

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