Study: You Hate Mobile Content
- December 11th, 2006
- 4 Comments
Despite a new report from IDC concluding that you don’t want entertainment from your handset (you have iPods for that, don’t you?), Verizon, T-Mobile, Cingular and Sprint keep churning out ideas to keep your eyes and ears on your phone. Of course, they do this to make money. The MVNOs are worse offenders, offering market-targeted content, like Disney for families, and the now-defunct ESPN Mobile for sports nerds. The demise of ESPN Mobile should itself be evident of the fact that you don’t want their crap.
That may change, however, as handsets evolve. We see on the horizon features we might want, like live TV, YouTube integration, enough memory to hold more than a token handful of MP3s. The question here is this: do you not use your handsets to the extent of their ability because you don’t know how or because you don’t care?
IDC’s study says it’s both. It’s worth a read, as we learn that, sure, the occasional customer downloads a ringtone or watches a CNN clip, but by and large you’re paying for bandwidth and services you don’t use. We think, however, that it’s not a complete lack of interest on your part, but rather on the networks not offering what you want or need. (EDIT: Or accessing it is such a frustrating experience it makes you want to hurt the person that sold you your handset.–JG) But, in the end, we have to ask a follow-up question: Why don’t you use wireless entertainment?
Report: Wireless Entertainment Falls Flat [Playlist]







webonics (Who am I?)
1 year ago
I have a hard time justifying a purchase of a ringtone (song snippet) that can be as high as $3.99 with an expiration of 90 days when I can buy the full CD-quality song for from iTunes, Zune MarketPlace or Urge at $0.99. I have a Treo now, so now I can edit those songs in Adobe SoundBooth or Sony SoundForge and put them on my smartphone and use them for ringtones and bypass the inefficient download process and expensive ringtone costs. Plus, the download burns up my data minutes.
steve campbel (Who am I?)
1 year ago
two suggestions:
http://www.create-ringtone.com is an application that lets you create, store and send ringtones, wallpapers, MP3, video and other files to your cell phone
http://www.mobilatory.com is a place where you can store and send all kinds of files to your cell phone
mathew (Who am I?)
1 year ago
I used to use my phone web browser and SMS all the time. Then I switched to Cingular, who make me pay a ton of cash for even SMS messages. Since then I’ve pretty much stopped using the phone’s web and text message features, even though the new phone has a much better browser.
Sam (Who am I?)
1 year ago
webonics is right. the majority of ringtones and realtones are way overpriced. I think you should pay a set fee per month and get all the ringotnes and realtones that you want.