Submitted by Mike Grenville on Mon, 30 Jul 2007 12:49

A study among frequent mobile phone users found that the vast majority are willing to sacrifice cost and quality of service in favor of convenience.

The survey conducted by Aricent among 110 attendees at the 2007 NXTcomm conference in Chicago in June, found that despite the continuing emergence of new applications, the address book remains the primary 'killer application' on a mobile phone.

Nearly half (51%) of respondents choose to use their mobile phone (rather than a fixed line) at home solely due to the convenience of the mobile phone's address book. Likewise almost two-thirds (60%) did the same at work.

When queried about their preference for one or multiple phone numbers, an overwhelming majority of respondents (79%) indicated a desire for a shared fixed and mobile phone number for work use. Approximately half expressed interest in a shared office and personal mobile number (55%) and/or a shared office and home number (48%) Forty-nine percent of respondents preferred a shared number for nearly all of their communications devices, including office, home, work and personal mobile.

Respondents also indicated that more than half (52%) of their total mobile voice calls are made in the office or at home, and additionally replied that nearly three quarters of their total mobile connections were voice connections only.

"Regardless of their personal usage patterns and habits, consumers continue to grow increasingly savvy and are likely to be very receptive of next-generation technologies such as femtocells, voice call continuity, and multimedia services (IMS)," said Jashojit Roy, Marketing Vice President, Aricent.