Study: Usability hampering mobile content adoption

Usability challenges, not pricing, are slowing the adoption of new mobile data services according to a new report issued by service adoption management vendor Olista. The study, based on statistical information documenting 11 million mobile users and hundreds of millions of usage events across five different mobile operator platforms, says that over 60 percent of mobile video and music downloads are made off-portal, which Olista argues graphically illustrates the pressures facing operators in luring subscribers to their own content offerings. Olista says that while 30 percent of consumers downloaded the same content over and over again, 85 percent of mobile TV users abandoned the service after just one viewing, underscoring the user interface difficulties facing mobile multimedia services. Moreover, greater than 70 percent of subscribers who signed up for content bundles failed to actually consume any mobile content, indicating that usability, not price, was the culprit. Olista adds that around 50 percent of all application downloads failed to complete successfully.

"The industry needs a wake-up-call to address and act on these issues," said Olista CEO Oren Glanz in a prepared statement. "Unless operators are accurately apprised of the issues experienced by their users they will never succeed in generating significant mobile data revenues, no matter how many attractive new marketing offers and services they launch. The key to unlocking the pent up demand for mobile content lies in understanding and addressing these barriers to adoption."

For more on the Olista report:
- read this Cellular-News article

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