Report on Aussie Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index - Games, True Tones, SMS, Maps, Music, MSN Messenger Most Popular

The Mobile Industry Group of the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association
(AIMIA), in collaboration with m.Net Corporation and Ideal Interfaces, has published the results of the fourth edition of the Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index. The report provides invaluable insight into the background, usage behaviour and preferences of Australian mobile phone users. Some of the key findings of this report are:

Mobile phone ownership:

• 49% owned a mobile phone for over seven years.
• 34% of participants noted that they owned a second mobile phone and/or SIM, with over half of those aged 22–40 years old, 62% of whom were female. Half of the respondents who owned a second mobile phone were married or living together.

Telecommunications provider:

• Optus (35%) and Telstra (25%) were in the same positions as the last survey and were still the dominant telecommunications providers among the participants of this survey. Vodafone (16%) just took the third spot back from 3 (15%).
• 26% of survey respondents noted that they would prefer to be with a different telecommunications provider.

Bill payment:

• Nearly 85% paid their own mobile phone bill.
• There was a significant increase in the number of respondents who were on prepaid (41%) while the remaining 58% had a monthly bill. Once again, the younger demographic tends to have prepaid, with the majority of over 25-year-olds on a monthly plan.
• 65% were on capped plans, another significant increase from the previous survey.

Monthly spend :

• 70% spent <$60, 19% spent $21–$31, and 14% of respondents spent more than $100 per month on their mobile phone bill.
• Brand: 47% of participants currently own a Nokia mobile phone (same as last year), followed by Motorola and Sony Ericsson (equal with 12%), with Samsung getting closer in third place with 11%.
• 25% of respondents stated that their phone was 3G, down from 30% last year. However, more people didn’t know if they had a 3G phone or not (20%) than in Survey 3 (11%).

Use of mobile phone by monthly phone bill spend:

• Most participants identified voice (84%) and SMS (84%) as key expenditure items on their monthly phone bill, followed by MMS (22%), buying content (9%), and email (7%).
• 9% of respondents who did not buy content via their phone bill purchased content through an alternative channel, e.g., a credit card statement. Overall the results are consistent with Survey 3 results.
• There was a slight decline in buying content compared to previous surveys, while there appears to be some services like MMS and email where customers are seeing value in spending additional dollars.
• Voice and SMS dominate as the key methods of communication across all groups.
• SMS and MMS are most popular as a means of communicating with family and friends.

Current Content Purchasing And Information Accessing Behaviour In The Last 12 Months

• Similar to last year, more than 50% of participants became aware of new mobile content via the Internet, then close friends, on the phone menu, and awareness via TV.
• 48% of participants purchased content via the Internet from a PC, 17% via the carrier’s portal, and 12% from the mobile phone menu.
• Of those that became aware of the content via the mobile phone, followed by Optus (25%) and Telstra (25%) in equal second. However, Telstra’s customers were more likely to become aware of new content via marketing from the telephone company (31%), followed by Optus (29%).
• The top three content types purchased were games (43%), true tones (42%) and wallpapers (33%).
• Digital music downloads continue to rapidly grow. In the last 2 years, the proportion of respondents who have purchased digital content downloads has increased by 113%. Other growth areas in the last 2 years were true tones (173% growth) and games (171% growth).
• Respondents on the 3 and Virgin networks were most likely to purchase mobile content, while Telstra customers were more likely not to. This is not a surprise at all, this is exactly what I predicted
• The greatest growth since Survey 3 has occurred in maps (347%), restaurant/café guides and reviews (174%), and TV listings (93%).
• Respondents on the 3 and Vodafone networks were most likely to use information services, while those on Optus, Virgin or ‘Other’ were less likely.

Expected Future Usage

• The most popular requests for future mobile content were digital music downloads (30%), games (27%) and wallpapers (25%).
• The most popular requests for future mobile information were maps (31%), news (29%) and weather content (28%).
• Again, SMS (62%) was the most desired application for future use, email (49%) came second, and then MMS (42%).
• 83% of respondents stated that they used at least one of the listed online communities on their PC.
• MSN Messenger was the most popular computer community (46%), followed by YouTube (45%) and Facebook (28%).

Communities on the Mobile Phone

• In almost an exact reverse of the above, only 16% of respondents stated that they used at least one of the listed online communities on their mobile phones.
• MSN Messenger was again the most popular mobile community (8%), followed by Facebook (5%) and MySpace (3%).

Creating and Sharing Content for the Mobile Phone

• 33% of respondents said that they had created content on their mobile phones to share with others. 96% shared photos, 41% shared videos and 32% shared music.
• MMS (63%) and Bluetooth (61%) were the main methods of sharing content. This is important for marketers as it suggests that consumers have a good understanding of how to transfer data via Bluetooth.

One thing is clear Mobile is becoming a more popular means of communication, consumption of services & entertainment. Since these findings don't have any data from the newly released iPhone 2.0. It will be interesting to see how iPhone2.0 changes the landscape in future because it will fuel the growth of this domain enormously.
For more detailed insights, download this report.