Middle-aged will drive mobile web
Posted 20 April 2007 at 8:15AM by Simon Dickson in Email and communications
It's being suggested that self-employed, middle-aged men are most likely to drive the take-up of mobile web browsing.
'Mobile internet just hasn't been attractive to consumers, says Martin Wilson, who runs Yell.com's mobile marketing. 'Bad experiences on WAP, high costs and slow applications have put them off.' But new research by Yell shows, he says, that 'consumers are now starting to find a real need for mobile search in their everyday lives.'
Yell's study says it's mundane, functional requirements which will make us reach for our phones and start browsing: they specifically mention train times or finding the nearest DIY store. They say 72 per cent would choose to use mobile web for practical, information services rather than for entertainment reasons. Maps, email, online banking and news/sport clips are also mentioned as likely drivers of mobile web use.
Certainly that sounds like a pretty good summary of my mobile web activity; but as people become more accustomed to using RSS feeds as a means of consuming their online information, I can see that becoming a major driver. These days I very rarely buy a newspaper, or even lift a free one, to while away a train journey; I'm much more likely to fire up my phone's browser, and start hacking through my RSS feeds. The phone-friendly versions of Bloglines and Google Reader are both particularly good.
Tags: bloglines, google reader, mobile, rss, wap, yell
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