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Mobile users speak: e-mail still trumps all

Telephia panelists rate wireless data services

by john dee fair
May/June 2001

One of the hottest issues facing the wireless industry today is the question of what services will emerge as the most popular ones for the next generation of wireless data technology. It seems everyone has a different opinion on the matter, so to gain greater insight into the issue we asked the folks who count most–those who actually are using wireless data today–to see what they had to say.

We surveyed the Telephia Wireless Data ePanel, a dedicated panel of wireless data users, which consists of users who have activated their wireless device and use it regularly for wireless data purposes. The nationwide panel includes wireless phone, personal digital assistant, laptop and two-way pager users. Respondents were asked to identify the top two wireless data services in which they were most interested. Since we asked for more than one answer, percentages total more than 100.

In overwhelming fashion, panelists said they were most interested in the ability to send and receive e-mail messages from their devices.

Across all four device types, close to 40 percent of respondents were interested in this service. Web-browsing capabilities came in second, with laptop users most interested (38 percent)–not surprising, given the large screen and navigation capabilities of the laptop–followed by PDA (29 percent), phone (24 percent) and pager users (19 percent). It is interesting to note that phone users were more attracted to mapping and direction services (18 percent) than their PDA (11 percent), laptop (8 percent) and pager (6 percent) counterparts. This makes sense, since the size and mobility of phones, combined with their voice capabilities, makes them suited to such a service. On the flipside, those carrying phones expressed little interest in accessing their employer’s network (8 percent), whereas PDA (20 percent), laptop (20 percent) and pager (23 percent) users felt differently.

John Dee Fair is vice president of research and development for Telephia Inc.