Two Thirds of Teens Want a Better Mobile Phone: Voice and Data Research Results

On Monday we started sharing the results of our voice and data research. Today we have part two: their purchasing plans for new phones that can do more and some insight into the things they think are missing from today’s mobile services.

We asked our Lab Members to pretend they were shopping for a new mobile phone. If one of the phone’s features was the ability to do multiple activities together, like talking and also viewing your email and more, how important would this capability be in selecting a phone? Over two thirds of the Lab members (69%) said that having this capability would be important in their purchasing decision.

Then we asked them what was missing from today’s mobile phones. We’ve summarized them here as recommendations. We encourage you to review the research to learn more about their specific ideas.

There are things we can fix or improve.
It’s time for the next-generation of texting; creating new features suggested by our Lab Members enriches the experience and gives them control. Internet browsing is still miserable and it’s likely holding back the purchases of other data services and new phones. And teens are ready to embrace video on their mobiles but delivering it two-way is almost a requirement.

Our teens think phones in the future should deliver more.
Phones that allow for multi-tasking are highly desired by the teens, but the tasks that work together have to make sense – mixing features that don’t have a natural association would likely backfire. When looking at this research relative to our other research, its clear today’s youth consider their phones to be similar to a portable computer and they are looking for portable computing features as a result.

Finally, get personal.
The mobile phone (and isn’t this the most personal device?) offers features that teens like including taking photos, video, and sharing. All these things help them build their personal brand and if we help them make the features work together seamlessly, they will be happy users indeed.

PS: you can see the entire study here. It’s call Mobile Multitasking.