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Posted May 29th, 2008 by David Greeson
That is the clear message that has come out of a world wide survey carried out by IBM. Consumers want to be able to customize and personalize how they can access the internet from their mobile phone. The mobile phone is by far the device that is easiest to carry and use to access the internet 24 hours 7 days a week.
The range of services such as online banking that are opening up on the internet is growing at a tremendous rate and it would be impossible for any one service provider to offer a tariff bundle including voice, text and internet access that suited every consumer. The ability to configure a package to suit their own requirements was by far the service most desired by the respondents to the above survey.
The figures for the projected growth in the value of revenues that will come from accessing the internet via mobile phones is estimated to be worth $80 billion by 2011. This demand is sure to increase the drive for innovation by both the mobile phone manufacturers, mobile phone networks and the service providers. At the same time the amount of mobile phone users that will access the web via their mobiles will increase by 69%.
The survey found that at present the majority of the services that were being accessed at present from the web by mobile phone users was centred around entertainment but in the future the demand would spread across utility and transactional services for example 60% of the respondents to the survey said that they would be interested in online banking via their mobile phones and over 50% would be interested in mobile TV
The same market forces that drove the growth of the demand for personal computers that customers were able to customize the applications and services that they wanted are having the same effect on the mobile web market place. The brand of the mobile network is not important to the future users the marketplace will have to create open platforms and it is the choice of services that will create future loyalty.
With the present growth in the use of mobile phones coming from the emerging nations such as India and China where the demand is for cheap mobile phones, this will drive the need for platforms that will operate with voice based interfaces. Such developments will likely allow these consumers to skip buying a PC something that would never have been imagined in mature markets.
The results of this survey certainly forecasts dynamic changes that will have to come from the existing business model that is focused around a mobile phone being used on a specific mobile phone network. New service driven players will emerge, new profit centres will be created and there will have to be strategic alliances between players that are competing against each other today.
What the consumer wants drives the market.
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