Treonauts do a LOT more than just talk.

I recently came across an extremely interesting study on US mobile phone usage habits by M:Metrics which made me think about the differences or similarities that might exist between traditional users and Treonauts as it is evident that we do a LOT more than just talk on our Treo.  A short survey at the bottom of this post should also provide us with additional insights.

According to the study, the market for mobile content and applications, while still young, includes the mainstream of mobile subscribers and spans gender and age groups. More than half (58 percent) of mobile subscribers use their handsets for something other than making phone calls. Key findings include:

• There is no gender gap when it comes to mobile game play.
  31 percent of female subscribers and 34 percent of male subscribers report having played a mobile game in the previous month. However, men are 60 percent more likely to download a game than women. "An analysis of the game catalogs of the five national mobile carriers provides a clue as to why there is such a disparity," said Seamus McAteer, M:Metrics co-founder and chief product architect. "Too many of the titles available for sale are action/adventure and sports games-- genres that our data demonstrate are more likely to appeal to men."

I wonder to what extent this 'men play more games than women' is prevalent across the board but there is no doubt that with the hundreds of game titles available for our Treo there should certainly be something to please both sexes and provide us with hours of handheld entertainment. 

• Ringtones aren't just for teens.
  While the majority of ringtones were downloaded by subscribers age 13-24, those over 25 years old accounted for 45 percent of all subscribers who downloaded ringtones. And more than 62 percent of those consumers downloaded more than one ringtone in the previous month. "The desire to make a personal statement with a ringtone appeals to a broad range of adult mobile subscribers," said Mark Donovan, vice president of products and senior analyst, M:Metrics.

Well, here I'm probably the odd man out since I've never been a huge fan of $$$ ringtones and to the best of my memory have never purchased one in my life even though I have downloaded a few free ones.  The whole issue of ringtones is particularly funny for me because it is the main reason that I (indirectly) became a Treonaut!  I was so frustrated with my previous Nokia phone because it did not have a standard 'normal' ringtone - something that sounded like a phone and not an electronic jukebox - that when the time came to upgrade I decided to get a Treo.  Having said this, I am currently evaluating a number of ringtone managers for our Treo and will write about this soon.

• Text messaging has wide appeal.
  Over half—52 percent—of subscribers age 25-34 sent or received text messages in the previous month, while 37 percent of those age 35-44 communicated via text. Among younger subscribers texting is ubiquitous with 68 percent of those age 18-24 sending and receiving text messages. "Even older folks are getting into the act," observed Donovan. "Fourteen percent of those over 65 use text messaging." Relative to its size, T-Mobile is the market leader in text messaging with more than half of its subscribers using the service.

It's funny how one of the best applications that comes built-in to our Treo is often also the least talked about - SMS Messaging.  I absolutely love the way it threads messages like an IM client so that I can easily follow my conversations by person over time.  Since owning a Treo I have personally increased my use of SMS tenfold.  The standard Treo Messaging application is in fact so good that it may very well be the only category where there isn't a single contender and I often wonder why palmOne and the carriers have not been promoting this more aggressively - particularly in Europe where SMS usage is prevalent.

• Photo messaging is still a fledgling service.
  More than 60 percent of subscribers who took a picture with their camera phone also sent a photo message to another phone or email address in the previous month. "The fact that people aren't just taking pictures, but starting to send them as well, indicates that operator enthusiasm for the service may be well founded," said McAteer. While the overall penetration of photo messaging is still low at 7 percent, Sprint has taken an early lead with 12 percent of its subscribers sending a photo to another mobile subscriber.

Like many, my Treo was the first camera phone that I've ever owned.  Although I played a little with it on my Treo 600 the fact is that the camera on it was lousy.  On my Treo 650 however it's been a completely different story not only because the camera is much better but also because two of my favourite applications are photo related - SplashPhoto and Splashblog.  The first (recently updated) now allows me to take a picture from within the application and to manage all my photos much faster than the built-in Media application while the second is a great way to take and then share photos via a dedicated blog.

• Mobile browsing is driven by context and time sensitive information.
  In total, 13 percent of mobile subscribers reported accessing news and information via a mobile browser in the previous month. Marked gender difference characterized mobile browsing with 17 percent of men subscribers and 9 percent of women subscribers using their mobile phones to access news and other information. Browsing activity was driven by a need for context-sensitive information.

Over half of all browsers sought weather information (57 percent), and more than 40 percent of browsers accessed maps and directions (41 percent), sports scores and sports news (44 percent), national news (44 percent) and movie and entertainment listings (40 percent). When it comes to news and information on your mobile phone, subscriber propensity to consume has to do with who foots the bill. Those with corporate accounts or accounts that are otherwise subsidized by their employer are significantly more likely to use the browser on their handset to access that kind of data compared with subscribers who are personally responsible for their bill.

As I mentioned last week in my post about Mobile Answers, we appear to be quite literally spoiled for choice when it comes to searching for information while on the go with our Treo.  We can choose to use our browser to view standard or mobile-optimized websites, retrieve the information via a dedicated application such as Handmark Express and even now using a number of free SMS services such as Google's (http://www.google.com/sms/).

Source: M:Metrics, Inc. Survey of US mobile subscribers, quarter ending January 31st 2005, n=35,381. Data for photo messaging, ringtones and graphics downloads for two months ending January 31st 2005, n=23,209.

So, are we like the rest of them or are Treonauts different?  Let us know by completing the short survey below: