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Submitted by Mike Grenville on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:58 |
A survey among subscribers to SEVEN's mobile email finds that they are using mobile email as much as voicemail and even more than SMS.
The online survey was with SEVEN's customers via its online community site in early October with 1,080 worldwide respondents of which >300 were in Europe. According to the survey SEVEN users are using mobile email even more than SMS, for personal email as much as work – and using mobile email on basic 12 key devices as much as special messaging devices with QWERTY Key boards.
More Email Than SMS
In Europe, SEVEN mobile email is used almost as much as voicemail on mobile devices with on average, voicemail used for 43% of communications on the device with email used for 36% of communications. This compares to just 19% using text messaging.
The surprising result that email is more used than SMS on mobile phones can be explained that the survey was among SEVEN mobile email users so was skewed towards keen mobile email users.
However Isabelle Dumont, Senior Director, Marketing at SEVEN sees the future of mobile messaging as going to email. "Email will be the main messaging application on the phone" she said "as users won't be able to use IM or SMS for all communications. This will result in a lot of consolidation around email in terms of user behaviour going towards email."
The survey found that in Europe regular use of mobile email is high with 93% stating that they use SEVEN mobile email every day. A key reason for this high usage was that 40% of users found that their day at work and their personal life runs more smoothly as they can connect with anybody whenever needed while 45% said that mobile email helps them be more productive.
12 Key Or Keypad
Among the survey respondents, 48% use a device with a Qwerty keyboard and 40% a 12-key device while just 12% have a touch screen. With this split in mind, it was interesting to see that email was used as much on 12-key devices as full keyboard devices; (38% on 12key and 36% on keyboards).
Dumont said that the keyboard/12 key responses were specfic to Europe where users have become much more adept as entering text on 12 keypads and the results were not the same in USA or in asia which language differences.
Usability Is Key
"The key to mobile email adoption is usability out box" said Dumont "and has been the barrier to adoption. If users can have one click access to email with an icon from the home screen, then you can get 80% adoption of email" she said.
"On most phones the diferent messaging clients, email, SMS, IM, are not integrated. The INQ1 just launched by 3 UK is the first phone with SEVEN's new generation of software clients that integrates different messaging types.
Dumont said that in Q1 2009 there will be a series of phones with more features dedicated to messaging. "There is a renewed interest in messaging partly as a reaction to Apple, but also because of the Blackberry" said Dumont. "Users want email on the phone but at a lower cost. As soon as email is on more devices usage will go towards it - SMS won't dissapear as it has uses in specfic situations."
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