Thanks for taking the time to write your thoughts on our recent. You raise some great points, and indeed point out some gaps in our press release.

Firstly, it is worth pointing out that our research was limited to mobile phones and not devices such as iPod Touches

Secondly, what is the mobile internet? Whatever people take it to be, in our opinion. Our research is from the consumer perspective. Our experience is that the average person (at least in Britain) doesn’t really care how a service is delivered to them (whether SMS, WAP, GPRS, application or otherwise), so long as it does what they want it to.

Thirdly, and inevitably, some of the nuance of research gets lost from data to press release to report to comment. The key word (which to be fair is missing from the opening paragraph of our press release) is “claim”. Is the true number of Brits ever accessing the internet higher than 24%? Probably, but not by much. Once we move beyond a certain demographic and lifestyle, the mobile internet is pretty niche behaviour.

What we were struck by among the general, non tech-savvy population is the lack of understanding and comprehension of mobile internet services. In addition to asking people whether or not they had an internet enabled phone (after weighting the data to a nationally representative population and to correct for attitudinal and behavioural imbalances caused by adminstering the survey online, this figure was 60% ie 40% claimed to), we also asked our respondents what their handset was. Not everyone could answer, so our dataset is incomplete but of those that did answer, close to 9 in 10 would appear to have at least a GPRS enabled phone. If we assume everyone not answering does not have an internet enabled phone, the figure drops to about two thirds.

There are several reasons for this imbalance
- People not regarding a “walled garden” experience as the internet
- The phone being a hand me down, where the user has little knowledge of the functionality
- The phone being purchased for reasons other than the mobile internet (such as the general aesthetics), and this functionality being ignored
- The user not regarding some functionality (e.g maps, or email) as being internet-based

One of the major findings from a research is that we feel mobile internet adoption (use, not just ownership of an enabled device) can accelerate if communications move towards emphasising the unique benefits of the mobile device over a computer – such as its proximity and mobility. When people beging to consider location-based services such as directions or vouchering, their interest is raised. We found that over half of (claimed) non mobile internet users were surprised at some of the services available by the mobile internet, and that seven in ten were interested in getting at least one (from a list of potential services shown to them).

I hope this helps clarify a few things. We’re big believers in the benefits of the mobile internet and believe it will take off in a big way before long. But we also believe it is important to not get too far ahead of ourselves, and bear in mind those that are perhaps less experienced in understanding and handling such technology

Best wishes,
Simon Kendrick, Essential Research