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In the Mobinet 4 study, conducted by A.T. Kearney and the Judge Institute at the Cambridge Business School, it was reported that 44 percent of mobile users want to be able to use their mobile phones for small cash transactions such as taxi fees or buying items from vending machines, but only two percent have done so.
The desire to use mobile handsets for so-called m-cash transactions was highest in Japan where 50 percent of respondents said they would like to have the ability. Meanwhile, in Europe 46 percent of mobile users expressed a similar desire. The figures fell to 43 percent in the rest of Asia and 38 percent in the US.
"The survey reflects disillusionment with early developments in WAP technology," Paul Collins, A.T. Kearney principal and leader of the study, told ElectricNews.Net. "But there is still life in this market," he said.
"The next spike in interest will be for m-cash which offers an opportunity in the same way that SMS has, but they (mobile operators, handset makers and developers) have to grasp this opportunity firmly," Collins said.
Collins said that in the Mobinet Index 18 months ago, there was high intent to use mobile phones to access the Internet, but those numbers have fallen drastically. This is primarily because the mobile community has not provided consumers with enough reasons to access the Internet using their phones. "Mobile cash could suffer the same fate," he said.
According to the report, more than 80 percent of mobile phone users in Finland and the United Kingdom use SMS at least once a month. In Sweden, Singapore, Italy and Germany, once-a-month usage is near 75 percent.
In fact, across the 14 countries studied, 35 percent of respondents reported using SMS daily, with once-a-day usage at 41 percent in Europe and 33 percent in Asia. However only five percent of Americans use SMS on a daily basis.
Importantly, the report's authors said that SMS could be the basic building block for more advanced m-cash or m-commerce transactions. Already 13 percent of mobile phone users worldwide and 18 percent of users in Europe report having already used SMS to download ringtones or logos for their phones.
The report also said that although 33 percent of users have Internet or WAP enabled phones, only negligible percentages use the service, and the figure is falling. Japan was the only exception to this trend.
For Mobinet 4, approximately 5,600 interviews were conducted with mobile phone users in 14 countries including Australia, China, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Sweden, Taiwan, the United States and the United Kingdom.
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