There was a user panel at Mobile Content World Australasia 2007, which are usually good for some insights into the customer base (although it should always be remembered that a small selection will always exclude some demographics). Some interesting insights:
Emily, a 15 year-old girl, was asked what she used her phone for and replied “SMS, MMS, Bluetooth, making phone calls, listening to music”. The order she mentioned it is very telling. When asked the same question the teenage boy started his reply with “taking photos, calls, watching video on the internet” … a lot of people keep reminding everyone that the mobile phone is first and foremost a phone, but with the youngsters phone calls are just one of a variety of services. It’s also interesting that the teens talked about “going on Bluetooth” rather than “using Bluetooth”, which suggests they do view it like the Web. They were mostly sharing music, by the way.
A couple of people had multiple phones and accounts, often used to call different people — for example, one lady had a Telstra phone just to talk to her mother (on Telstra) and a Vodafone phone for general use. When Telstra offered a deal to nominate 5 friends for cheap calls she jumped at the chance and convinced 7 friends to change to Telstra as well.
Not using content: There were two main reasons given for not using particular content, especially from the females on the panel. First, they didn’t know how to do it. One lady said she would definitely use her phone as an MP3 player and pay to download the songs, but she didn’t know how — she kept calling for workshops to teach people how to use all the functions of their phone. The other issue was the cost, several people said they didn’t use a particular service because they “don’t know what I’m getting into and don’t know the costs”.
The main content desired from the panel members was sports and news — and that was both for male and female. One man was a big watcher of mobile TV on 3, especially the cricket seris during the Ashes test — when asked why mobile TV was so great, he replied “because it works in the toilet”.
Finally, there are still issues with subscription services. One man spoke about his youngest son, whose latest monthly bill included $50 from Jamster (two $5 charges every week). He had the number barred.
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