“Evaluating the appeal of novel services such as watching video on a handheld device is much more complicated than asking a simple true/false question. Too often evangelists and naysayers grab on to simplistic research in order to prematurely extol or condemn emerging services such as mobile video. — TDG”
Remember that survey by the Royal Bank of Canada’s Capital Markets research group last week where I pointed out that the questions in a survey have a significant impact on the result?
Research company The Diffusion Group (TDG) has also derided that survey, pointing out that “RBC asked survey respondents to answer “true” or “false” to the following statement: “I am not interested in watching TV programs or movies on my handheld device.”
The large negative answer was inevitable. For starters, the question asked about the respondents handheld device, most of which wouldn’t be able to play mobile TV. The question should have at least indicated the consumer would have a different device that could handle the technology.
TDG has some far more detailed results of a survey on mobile TV. The most interesting is the response you get when you offer more than yes/no dichotomy…

As you can see almost a third of respondents reported some interest in watching TV on their mobile phone, with 22% being neutral.
TDG also found that young people were far more likely to be interested in watching mobile TV than older people (52.1% of 15-17 year olds were interested in the service, compared with 55% of 35-50 year olds who weren’t interested…these figures don’t include neutrals). The type of content offered is also important: “When presented with a list of the different types of content that could be viewed on a mobile phone, 57% of respondents identified at least one type of content that would be desirable to view on a mobile phone – approximately the sum total of those who previously said they were interested or neutral to watching video on a mobile phone.”
Surveys can always be skewed in the direction the surveyor wants by simply asking the right questions or putting them in a certain frame…it’s important to recognise when a survey is a valid reflection of market interest and when it’s merely a marketing exercise, but it’s very difficult.
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