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 more than 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's report 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. The report adds that around 50 percent of all application downloads failed to complete successfully.

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