E-Mail Is No 1 Wish for UK Mobile Web Surfers

October 30, 2000

LONDON (Reuters) — Mobile phone users can talk to each other all day but that is not enough — the ability to send email is top of their list for their next Web-enabled phone, Internet experts said on Monday.

Online research agency Jupiter MMXI said British cellphone users, asked in a survey what they wanted from the mobile Internet, named email far more than anything else.

Sixty-five percent wanted email, 27 percent wanted to use the wireless Internet for banking and 22 percent to get maps of where they were or directions to where they were heading. Only 14 percent cited sports scores or the latest news.

The findings, based on an August poll of online habits in Britain, give weight to those who say the Internet is about communication rather than commerce or entertainment.

Jupiter said in another report that European consumers would buy hardly anything via the mobile Internet in coming years. It said the personal computer will still be the dominant device for Internet access three years from now, generating some 87 percent of commercial and advertising revenues, with mobile phone commerce generating just two percent.

Interactive television would make up the rest.

Reuters News Service

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