Americans Not Interested In Mobile Video — Survey

A survey of 1001 Americans conducted on behalf of Royal Bank of Canada’s RBC Capital Markets research group found that three-quarters of respondents weren’t interested in watching TV programs or movies on their handheld, and 69 percent said they weren’t interested in listening to music on their mobiles either. Another nail in the coffin of mobile TV or yet another survey that says nothing? It’s hard to tell without seeing the questions. Just as an example, answer these two questions:
–Would you like to watch the same sort of TV programming you get on your television set on your mobile phone?
–If your favorite team was in the playoffs and you couldn’t watch the game, would you be interested in watching the game or getting video highlights on your mobile phone?
Hopefully everyone can see my point…in this case the survey appeared to focus on something else (RBC’s press release is here), namely whether rapid changes in mobile phone technology detered consumers from buying new handsets. The answer appears to be affirmative…”45% say too many product choices prevent them from making a purchase decision. The survey found rapidly changing technology deters more than half of potential purchasers (56%) from buying new handheld technologies.”
To my mind this survey sounds a warning bell — not that Americans don’t want rich mobile content, but that a lot of them are unwilling to buy it any time soon. But they will once it becomes commonplace — when color screens were added to the phones most people said they didn’t want them, and now everyone does. The same can be said of the ability to change ringtones. And of cameraphones. The market will be there, it will just take a while to catch on after the technology is introduced — so the offerers better be prepared for that time lag. Besides, as myself and many others have pointed out, even if only 25% of people are interested in mobile TV, that’s 25% of a very large number.
The survey also showed that nearly 60% of Americans said “mobile marketing was a nuisance and “should be prohibited,” with 4 in 10 claiming they’d pay more for a phone or PDA that banned ads or marketing messages. Once again the question of what is a marketing message becomes important…

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