This is the second part of PCPro’s music survey — this part focussing on mobile phones. There are some very interesting statistics here…
Thirty percent of respondents had phones capable of playing music tracks, 56 percent didn’t, while eight percent didn’t know and six percent responded that they didn’t own a mobile phone…however, only 13% of respondents said they sometimes listened to music, and only 4% said they listened to music on their mobiles “very often”. So only 13% of people who have a music-capable phone use it on a regular basis. This is a pretty poor result, but if you look at people on a crowded bus only a minority of them are listening to music via a personal player…most people who own a music-capable phone probably received that feature as an aside to what they actually wanted (after all, no-ones going to refuse to buy a phone because it has an MP3 player — they just won’t use it), so the expectation that mobile music services can’t be considered a success unless they have a high percentage of people using them often is a little misguided.
However, the responses to the following question are more enlightening…”We asked: Whether or not you currently listen to music on your mobile phone, please choose what you think is the most important benefit of downloading music to a mobile phone?”
Despite the phrasing of the question “a resolute 36 per cent of respondents said they don’t see any benefits of downloading music to a mobile phone“. Now, some of these will be Apple fanboys who will deride opposition in the face of all reason, but 36% is far too high a number to be dismissed. More than one in three respondents to the survey could not even imagine a benefit to downloading music to a mobile phone.
Of those that could imagine a benefit, 53% cited having to carry only one device and 4% welcomed the prospect of integrated charging to their phone bills. “Success may be down to a mixture of convenience and the billing mechanism. Mobile users are already used to paying a couple of quid, or more, for a ringtone. A full tune for
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