Mobile consumers have the answer

In January we took to Twitter to ask what burning questions our followers had in mind about mobile users and their relationships with their devices. We picked the most interesting questions and asked our panels in the US and Great Britain to share their preferences.

We know that tablet sales are stagnant and that 79% of American panelists without a tablet have said that the reason they are not planning to buy a tablet in the next 12 month is because their PC is “good enough” for them. When we asked consumers who own a PC if they are planning to replace that PC in 2015, 85% of the panelists interviewed said they are not. 11.3% said they indeed are planning to replace their current PC with another, and1.7% said they will replace that PC with a tablet. Finally, 1.9% plan to replace their PC with a convertible.

Consumers in the 25 to 34 year bracket are the most favorable to tablets, with 2.9% planning to purchase one as a replacement for their PC. Consumers 16 to 24, are the most open to convertibles (3.5%) most likely because they’re still in their school years,

Virtual reality and head mounted displays have been around for years, but the category itself has seen significant change in the past year with vendors like Oculus, Samsung, Microsoft and most recently at Mobile World Congress HTC launching new devices and solutions. We asked consumers in both the UK and US about their level of interest in VR. 30% of American panelists and 24% of those in Britain said they do not see the point in virtual reality devices. Perhaps not surprisingly, 51% of Americans and 54% of Brits had never heard of these devices. The youth segment in the US is the most interested in buying these devices (9.6%) while in Great Britain it is the under-16 who are the most interested (12.3%).

Over the past few weeks Great Britain has witnessed a reinvigorated battle between iOS and Android. With that in mind, we asked consumers there if it mattered to them whether their mobile phone can interact with other devices. On a scale of 0 – 10 (from “Not Important At All” to “Very Important”), 40.5% of smartphone owners scored 7 or higher while only 13.6% of feature phone owners did. Understandably, the percentage of those scoring 7 or higher grows to 45% for users who own both a smartphone and a tablet.

Finally, we wanted to know how consumers saw themselves when it comes to influencing friends and family in their technology choices. It came as no surprise that in Britain the 25 to 34 year olds see themselves as quite influential - 47% rated themselves 7 or higher on a scale from 0 to 10. In the US the most influential group was the 16 to 24 year olds, with 43% of them rating themselves 7 or higher. In both countries men see themselves as more influential than women.