Nokia survey finds mobile phones may replace cameras and MP3 players

06 June 2006 - A recent study by Nokia finds, perhaps unsurprisingly, that people want and, indeed, expect more from their mobile phones than just phone calls.

According to the survey, 44% use their mobile as their primary camera, and 72% say that their mobile has rendered their alarm clock obsolete as they rely on their phone to wake them up.

Despite the relatively high cost of surfing the net with a mobile, 36% of respondents say they use their mobiles to go online at least once a month, whereas 37% of Japanese respondents go online with their mobiles at least once a day.

Mobile phones are more important to 21% of respondents than their wallet, credit cards, or their wedding ring.

Nokia also pried into the music habits of those surveyed, to find out the 67% download a percentage of their music, while 87% believe they buy more music now than before they owned a digital music device. Of those surveyed, 67% say that mobile phones will replace their MP3 players.

In the home, almost half the respondents want all their gadgets, including printer, PC, and mobile device, interconnected.

The survey was run by ICM Research, who interviewed 500 people in each of eleven countries for a total of 5500 respondents.

Via MopHap

Comments

[Tim]

"According to the survey, 44% use their mobile as their primary camera"

According to you the camera is already replaced. According to this survey the phone hasn't even hit a 50% threshold for "primary" use.

This survey also needs data broken out: each country had the same weighting, 500 for each, when each country does not have the same weighting in population. This survey is only relevant if the data for each country is weighted and/or if it's results are broken out by country, not totalled.

[Tomi T Ahonen]

PLEASE TIM

Be reasonable. The survey says 44% OF PHONE USERS use the cameraphone as their primary camera.

WAKE UP. Last year the stand-alone digital camera market reached 100 million cameras sold.

The worldwide mobile phone population is 2.4 BILLION. Last year they sold 815 million phones, half of those had cameras.

The 44% of ALL PHONE USERS is totally consistent with total worldwide cameraphone populations, and massively dwarfs the stand-alone niche specialist high-end camera market

Tim, you are now blinded by your rage. Read the numbers, THINK for a little bit before you post

And Tim, how about you give us one survey to support your idiotic positions? We report everything we can find on these topics.

Tomi :-)

[Harsh Dhundia]

Tomi,

You're talking about camera phones, check out what the mobile web is doing! Yesterday, one of our users on LinknSurf (www.linknsurf.com) herself told me that she used her phone for web purposes than her PC. It's another thing that she uses LinknSurf 24/7! This maybe an isolated case but I have a feeling that we're going to be seeing more such cases. I actually wrote about it on my blog.

Harsh

[Tim]

What's unreasonable: you claimed it was much higher and now you report it as only 44% as "primary.' Nothing unreasonable there.

You then give more silly mumbers, so what? You conceded that of the 800+ million (why mention 2.4 billion if you know the majority don't have cameras? It's non sequitar), many are replacements or are owned by people with multiple phones in Europe and Asia... Then throw in your 44% number and you get a number about equal with digital camera shipments. Not surprising.

"And Tim, how about you give us one survey to support your idiotic positions? We report everything we can find on these topics."

I'm simply rebutting specious claims. Use some real data accurately and I won't have to. Every piece of data you present expresses my own views quite accurately -- you spin them to meaningless blather.

[Mickeleh]

A self-serving press release (is there any other kind?) from a handset manufacturer is likely to feature cherry-picked responses that favor the business objectives of the manufacturer. I wish we had more info about the methodology and results of this survey. All we know is 500 people in each of eleven countries. Which countries? What were the criteria for selecting respondents?

Aren't Tim's concerns with weighting the results from the various countries valid? Tomi passed over that objection to single out what he called Tim's "idiotic positions."

BTW, Tomi, to play devil's advocate, characterizing a commenter as taking "idiotic positions," seems inconsistent with saintliness. ;)

I find some of the claims in the press release unhelpfully vague:"67% download a percentage of their music" Any percentage? Paid for or otherwise? To phone or PC? And that factoid teaches us what?

[Tomi T Ahonen]

Hi Harsh, Tim and Mikeleh

(I'm on vacation, so am not regularly at the blogsite every day. I'm not trying to avoid you)

Harsh - yes, I believe that is the trend. I'll stop by your blogsite when I'm back in London and have a little bit better time.

Tim - yes, I still ask, be reasonable. 44% of phone users report using a cameraphone as their primary camera. Last year 400 million cameraphones were sold. I don't now remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but in 2004 it was approx 250 million, in 2003 apporx 120 million. 2001-2002 were very small amounts. Add those up we're at 770 million at end of last year. There were 2.1 billion mobile phone users at end of 2005. Out of those about 200 million are second subscriptions, so it leaves about 1.9 billion unique users. Out of those 770 million have cameraphones. My math says this is a bit over 40%? This is at end of 2005. Today cameraphones are nearly 75% of all mobile phones sold.

WHERE IS THE CONFLICT?

So yes, go do your basic math and then come back.

Mikeleh. I appreciate the comment. The discussions with Tim go back several dozen lengthy comments in several threads of comments, and he's just about used up my patience. (But hey, I'm on vacation, so I'll recharge ha-ha)

I will accept we can have more data, for sure. I'll also accept that press releases are always tainted to give the best view from a given player.

But yes it's not the serious photographer we're talking about. Wedding photographers, sports photographers, etc will always use professoinal (or semiprofessional) camera equipment. But for the casual snapper the game is purely cameraphones. What good is the nice 5 megapixel Nikon when it sits in your closet. Then the 1 megapixel "toy" on the cameraphone has to do. The best camera is the one you have WITH you.

The numbers are overwhelmingly in favour of the cameraphone. I cannot believe we are even arguing this matter today in 2006. This argument was settled by the IT industry analysts back in 2004 as game over and settled.

Sorry.

Gotta go... I'll be back about once a week, expect my replies with some delays.

Tomi :-)