All the mobile and wireless services in the world are not going to survive very long if they do not experience significant user take-up. Research currently underway by World Wide Worx, entitled Mobility 2005, aims to provide significant insight into the state of mobile communications in the local market.
Says World Wide Worx MD, Arthur Goldstuck: ?How are SA individuals and businesses using cellphones, handheld devices, laptop computers and wireless technology, and what impact is mobility having on their lives and businesses? How can businesses take advantage of the way in which technology is being used? And how can mobile and wireless technology and mobile commerce improve the lives of South Africans and, ultimately, all Africans? Mobility 2005 aims to answer all of these questions.?
The research is being conducted in six phases: A study of the emerging mobile commerce industry; the state of the mobile and wireless services industry in SA; the state of mobile radio in SA; the impact of mobile and wireless technology on corporate SA; the impact of mobile and wireless technology on SMMEs in SA, and the impact of mobile and wireless technology on the local consumer.
The fourth and fifth phases (the impact of mobile and wireless technology on corporate SA and the impact of mobile and wireless technology on SMMEs in SA) have yielded some interesting results. The first of which is that, in the corporate sector (100 companies were surveyed), 3G penetration is expected to increase from 5 percent to 34 percent -- great news for service providers. In the SME sector, 3G is a non-starter - not necessarily great news for service providers. Only 14 of the 1,149 companies surveyed intended to make use of 3G services in 2005. SMS is still the killer app in this sector -- some 35 percent of SMEs do, or will, make use of it this year, up from 17 percent.
Both sectors rate the cellular phone and laptop as the most important mobile technologies -- scored as highly important by 86 percent and 84 percent respectively of corporate respondents, and 63 percent and 57 percent of SME respondents. Interestingly, despite the expected high increase in take-up of 3G by corporates, some 27 percent could not determine the technology?s importance to the business.
Possibly of concern again for the cellular service providers is the relatively low rate of satisfaction with cellular voice services given by corporates -- 75 percent, as opposed to 85 percent of SMEs.
In terms of technology sophistication, 49 percent of SMEs consider themselves to be relatively advanced laptop users, versus only 41 percent of corporates. Neither group rates itself as particularly sophisticated in the use of high-end mobile technologies (WiFi and wireless broadband), with a third of corporates not using these, and a further third making basic use thereof. Eighty-eight percent of SMEs described their use of such as basic or very basic.
On the brand-war front, Nashua Mobile and Autopage Cellular have the greater wallet-share of the cellular service providers in the SME space, Cell C is the preferred network, and Nokia the preferred phone brand. On the corporate side, Vodacom won out as both the network and provider of choice, Nokia was again the handset of choice.
Quality of product or service was listed as the most important criteria when selecting a provider amongst the corporate sector (96 percent), while the SMEs rated reliability (92 percent), and then quality (91 percent). Price was given an importance rating of 74 percent and 64 percent by the respective sectors.