Fifteen million mobile web users forecast

Consumers are predominantly using prepaid payment mechanisms, especially amongst lower income users, and this is unlikely to change significantly in the near future. Nevertheless, mobile internet browsing and mobile email access are expected to increase rapidly, with the report forecasting over 15 million users accessing the Internet directly or indirectly on their handsets by 2013.

Ryan Smit, consumer market analyst at BMI-T and author of the report, notes that handset trends such as media-orientated handsets, navigation handsets, and touch screen interfaces indicate that consumers are demanding higher functionality from their handsets, with convergence becoming more and more prevalent.

New operating systems such as iPhone OS and the Android platform have opened up many possibilities, especially when viewed in combination with their application stores which offer the user the ability to buy and install applications directly from his handset.

Most important characteristics

Users have indicated that their most important characteristics for choosing a handset are long battery life, user-friendliness, camera capabilities and a large screen size; these characteristics, however, differ strongly among different market segments, with younger consumers valuing instant messaging highly whil middle-aged consumers value email functionality more.

Mobile instant messaging is also likely to increase the significant growth it has experienced recently, with users demanding the functionality and affordability that it offers. Concurrently, it is also expected that mobile social networking is likely to experience strong growth as traditionally PC-based social networks improve their mobile access functionality, and mobile-based offerings provide social networking functionality to those users without PC access.