South African consumers have become more knowledgeable about the increased functionality of mobile phones, with 26% aware of being able to purchase via cellphone.
This is one of the key findings of the Mobility 2007 study conducted by World Wide Worx and sponsored by First National Bank (FNB).
Speaking at a media briefing in Sandton yesterday, Dashboard Research CEO Peter Searll said awareness of cellphone technologies has increased 11% on average. The use of cellphone technologies grew by 5% in the past year, he said.
The use of phone cameras, GPRS and WAP posted the biggest increases, with buying via cellphone starting off from a low base, the study found.
Mobile banking matures
The study revealed cellphone banking has matured, becoming a strong mainstream banking channel.
Searll said the penetration of cellphone banking more than doubled, and will climb even more sharply in the next year.
"This is the first time we`ve got an electronic channel adopted by the mainstream market," said FNB`s mobile and transaction solutions CEO Len Pienaar.
Pienaar said FNB sees over 100 million cellphone banking transactions per month. SMS notifications of banking transactions are also included in this figure, he said. Over 70% of FNB customers use cellphone notification.
Crystal-balling
World Wide Worx MD Arthur Goldstuck said airtime top-up is the main cellphone purchase. Mobile content and ringtones are also drivers of mobile commerce.
However, unlike airtime purchases, mobile content buyers are not conscious of making the buying decision, he said.
In the next two years, more services that use mobile commerce will be developed. People will be able to pay for parking or a movie booking with their mobile phones, he said. This is already happening in other countries.
"We`re going to see people use airtime as a currency to make person-to-person payments. Maybe the handyman will take payment by airtime."
Goldstuck added, in the future, merchants will also set up the infrastructure to accept payment via cellphones. However, there are still issues to be worked out in that regard.
Both Searll and Pienaar encouraged the building of transactional services that are enabled by cellphone banking. They said their experience with mobile banking was that" if you build it, they [the customers] will come".
The consumer segment of the Mobility 2007 research was made up of an initial sample of 400 consumers and an additional 175 booster sample of mobile banking users.
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