NEW YORK-If 7,000 responses from last month’s survey by Solomon-Wolff Associates are an accurate barometer of wider trends, then electronic mail is the primary use consumers want for wireless Internet access.
“Are you disappointed?” Susan “Joey” Wolff, partner, asked her audience at the conclusion of her presentation at last week’s Telecom Business Conference and Expo here.
“Development will probably occur if prices come down in line with peoples’ expectations about e-mail or some killer app comes along that changes the way people view wireless.”
The 17-year-old Mountain Lakes, N.J., market research and consulting company focuses on eliciting information from and about end users.
Of the people interviewed in July who have wireless Internet access, 44 percent connect via laptop computers, 32 percent by cellular phone, 18 percent through personal digital assistants and 6 percent by pager.
The majority of these reported they spend between $20 and $39 monthly for this service. These users also expressed a strong preference for spending less than that, particularly because about 75 percent of their usage involves getting and sending personal and business e-mail.
“As a group, they are pretty satisfied with their service,” Wolff said.
“PDA users are, by far, the most developed set of wireless Internet users, but there are 2 million PDAs, compared to 160 million wireless phones. PDA users are more interested than other kinds of wireless users in different services. This is not surprising. But the bad news is that they are not a huge market, as are pager, laptop and cell-phone users.”
Wolff added that the survey queried people on specific alternative uses for wireless Internet access, including online shopping, conducting investment transactions and getting directions or other location-based information. However, respondents were not asked about downloading and listening to music.
Current wireless Internet users who have invested at least $5,000 through online securities trading in the past year and those who made at least $5,000 in online purchases during the last six months comprised a small subset of people interested in such services over the airwaves.
“Those who use wireless Internet are satisfied with how it works, and they don’t see it for things like getting restaurant information,” Wolff said.
Of those without wireless Internet access, 21 percent expressed definite interest in it, while 24 percent expressed probable interest.
Within this group of “low hanging fruit,” 51 percent were men and 49 percent were women. By age, the two disproportionately large clusters of most interested potential customers are teenagers and people aged 56-65.
The older group consists largely of senior executives, the self-employed and owners and partners of small businesses. Proprietors of small businesses also were in the vanguard of cellular and paging adoption, Wolff said.
A substantial 44 percent of all those expressing strong interest in wireless Internet access said they would want to connect by cell phone, while 29 percent preferred laptop computers. However, when asked what kind of carrier this group of likely customers would choose, a different picture emerged: 27 percent said a cellular or PCS provider, 22 percent said a local landline operator, 17 percent said an Internet service provider and 14 percent said a new kind of wireless Internet company.
“Overall, wireless providers enjoy a generally high satisfaction level, but that is slipping,” Wolff said.
“The 22 percent response in favor of a local phone company really surprised us. We didn’t expect this.”
Mirroring those who already have wireless Internet access, 70 percent of likely users said they viewed this service “as e-mail enhancement as opposed to Internet enhancement,” she said.
“If you’re in wireless Internet (provision), you need to think about that.”
In line with this e-mail enhancement expectation, 56 percent said they would be unwilling to pay more than $10 additional per month for the service.
However, Wolff noted that in the course of many consumer surveys, Solomon-Wolff Associates has found people generally say they are willing to pay less than they actually would.
