Study: Users want practical mobile applications

Consumers desire practical, utility-based mobile applications like mobile-optimized banking and travel planning more than basic entertainment services according to a new usage and attitudes study conducted by mobile web domain registry dotMobi and digital agency AKQA's Research & Insights unit. dotMobi notes growing consumer trust in the security of the mobile web, citing the volume of consumers demanding access to mobile banking and related m-commerce services. In addition, roughly 90 percent of the 2,000 respondents said they would be more likely to select an airline with mobile check-in over one that did not offer mobile services, while almost two thirds of participants said they would consider purchasing theater tickets, take-out food and travel tickets on mobile.

dotMobi notes that consumer awareness remains a significant challenge: About 50 percent of respondents said they were unaware of the existence of websites optimized for the mobile platform, with 86 percent expressing interest in learning which sites are easily accessible via mobile device. Moreover, close to 50 percent of respondents reported that their initial mobile web user experience was so poor that it made them "reluctant to access" the site or the mobile Internet as a whole again, citing poor site display and layout as the primary culprits. Only 2 percent of the survey participants who've purchased new handsets in the past six months selected an iPhone.

For more on the dotMobi/AKQA study:
- read this release [1]

Related articles:
dotMobi [2] acquires Mowser
dotMobi [3] to auction adult content domains
dotMobi [4] launches mobile web task force