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Our Bureau

Concern about using up battery power is one of the top reasons why consumers do not use games, music and TV applications on their mobiles more frequently.

New Delhi , Sept. 23

A new study by a global market information provider TNS reveals that a longer battery life is the most desired feature on a handset for an Indian mobile user.

TNS Global Tech Insight has also indicated Internet telephone and surround sound speakers for high quality audio as the other two most desired features.

"Reaffirming the fact that insufficient battery life is still a real `pain point' for consumers today, concern about using up battery power is one of the top reasons why consumers do not use games, music and TV applications on their mobiles more frequently," said a press release.

This is in line with the global findings from across the 15 countries surveyed between July and August 2005, which pointed out that two out of every three mobile-device users selected `two-days of battery life during active use' as a highly important feature of a converged mobile device.

The TNS Global Tech Insight study was undertaken to uncover what will drive consumer demand for mobile devices in the future. Across all countries, almost half of the respondents say a `high resolution camera and video camera' (48 per cent) and `20 gigabytes of memory' (47 per cent) are also very important features to incorporate in an ideally converged device.

About 61 per cent of the mobile users in South Korea and 39 per cent in Hong Kong have used a camera phone. In India, 8 per cent of mobile phone users report using their phone cameras at least once a week.

However, India stands out in the global (personal digital assistant) PDA usage. Out of the total PDA users, only 16 per cent claim that they do not have a camera in comparison to other countries where the majority do not have a camera feature in their PDAs. Sending photos and pictures via MMS is the highest in Japan (80 per cent), while in India, the top reason for not using MMS was the expensive charges as cited by 60 per cent of respondents. In the Indian metros, contrary to the popular assumption, majority of the respondents (69 per cent) do not even own a phone that supports sending or receiving of pictures or photos by MMS functions and merely 5 per cent use the MMS functions daily.

Global Tech Insight 2005 surveyed 6,800 adults aged 16-49 who either own a mobile phone, a PDA or a laptop and who access the Internet every week. The study was conducted in 15 countries globally between July 11 and August 15, 2005.

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`Indians want mobiles with longer battery life' — Study undertaken to uncover consumer demands from mobile devices in future

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