Low interest levels for wireless content in Canada, with exception of youth: Decima

Canadians overall show little desire to begin purchasing music and television content for their mobile phones, but the carriers likely have a close eye on one group that has expressed a relatively enthusiastic reaction to its availability – youth and students. A recent poll of Canadians by Decima Research Inc. finds that significant numbers of young Canadians are aware of and interested in the content. Further, expectations of how much it will cost are in line with market reality, especially among youth and students, perhaps indicating that they are already using the products. Overall awareness is also high among Canadians despite the relative newness of the services. Rogers Wireless just recently announced its Rogers Music Store offering that takes first generation wireless downloading to new levels with the availability of polyphonic ringtones and full music track downloads. Television content is also being freshly introduced – in fact, both Bell Canada and Rogers have announced plans to offer the content. The Decima survey, conducted in May by telephone of 1,028 Canadians, shows a surprisingly high level of awareness about wireless music and TV content. Asked whether they were aware that "some cellular telephone companies are now offering live television programs on your cell phone," 54% of Canadians who have access to cell phones said they were. English Canadian cell phone users claimed higher awareness over their French-Canadian counterparts. About 57% of English Canadians said they are aware of the services, and 42% of French Canadians claimed awareness. Despite a high level of awareness, however, few Canadians seem interested in actually having access to television content delivered wirelessly. Only 4% of Canadians overall who identified themselves as having cell phone access said they were extremely or very interested in having access. Fully 89% said they were not very or not at all interested – 76%, in fact, said they were not at all interested. However, and not surprisingly, youth with access to cell phones are relatively keen to begin accessing live television content. Younger Canadians ages 18-24 said they were extremely or very interested 21% of the time; a full 13% answered by saying they were extremely interested. The numbers of extremely or very interested cell phone users dives outside of that age bracket, however, with the next largest group at 4% being 24-44 years old. There was a large difference between English and French Canadians. Just 2% of the latter said they were extremely or very interested, compared to 5% of English Canadians. Pricing expectations Decima also tested pricing expectations among cell phone users around wireless television content, and discovered some interesting linguistic differences. Overall, 19% cell phone users expect to pay between $1-$10 per month, 20% said it would cost between $11-$40, and 8% said they would expect to pay more than $40. Fully 19% of cell phone users expect the content to be free – a number that jumps to 61% when the question was asked of Quebeckers. Elsewhere in Canada, the number of Canadian cell phone users who would expect to pay between $11-$40 ranges from 18% to 24%, depending on their province of residence. In an encouraging sign for the carriers, the younger the cell phone user, the greater the chance he or she says it will cost more. Among cell phone users 18-24, 33% say they would expect TV-to-mobile services to cost between $11-$40, a figure that drops off steadily as age gets higher. Possibly speaking to strong awareness around current market offerings, new as they are, just 3% of Canadians 18-24 said they don’t know what they expect prices for the service to be, a number that climbs steadily to 33% of cell phone users age 55 and over. As Canadians get older, they are also more likely to expect that the service would be free, the survey finds. Greater awareness of music The availability of music downloads showed strong awareness in the survey, especially among youth and younger Canadians. Decima asked cell phone users whether, "you are aware that some cell phone companies are now offering an extensive library of music that can be downloaded to your cell phone?" Overall, 69% said yes. The figure climbs into a staggering majority when asked of cell phone users 18-24, who answered yes 87% of the time, and those 25-34, who said they were aware of the service 79% of the time. The number dropped below 70% when the question was asked of cell phone users 35 or older. Cell phone users who identified themselves as students said they were aware of music download services in 88% of cases. Again, the survey showed a linguistic dichotomy, as 71% of English Canadian cell phone users overall said they were aware of the service, compared to just 63% of French Canadians. The same age split that was apparent around interest levels for television content was again evident for wireless music downloads. Just 7% of cell phone users overall said they were extremely or very interested when asked, "how interested would you be to download music to your cell phone?" A whopping 69% of cell phone users overall said they were not at all interested. But, those numbers jumped when the question was asked of cell phone users 18-24, who expressed strong interest in 30% of cases, compared to just 36% who said they had little or no interest in the content. Among cell phone users 25 to 34, the number falls off steeply to just 8% expressing strong interest, and fewer than 5% of respondents 35 or over expressed strong interest. Price awareness high with youth As with television content, youth appear to have internalized current market pricing around music downloads, as the graph indicates. Though pricing may be in flux through the introductory period, it’s likely that youth and others who believe that tracks will cost below $1 to upwards of $5 each are already aware of music download services such as Apple Corp.’s iTunes and Moontaxi Media’s Puretracks, which currently sell tracks for $0.99, or sometimes less as price competition heats up, especially in the U.S. The very small number of younger cell phone users who say they don’t know how much they would expect the music to cost also bears out the possibility that they see music downloaded to phones as analogous to PC-based music downloads. The margin of error for a sample this size is +/- 3.1% at the 95% confidence level.

Low interest levels for wireless content in Canada, with exception of youth: Decima

News | 05/30/2005 4:00 am EDT

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