A year of heavy marketing of mobile broadband has pushed the mobile phone
networks ahead of WiFi hotspots as the most popular way of accessing the
internet on the move. Point Topic's recent survey of mobile broadband
users shows that the UK mobile phone companies have managed to grow their
market share to 47% of users accessing the internet away from home or
work. This compares to 42% who prefer WiFi hotspots. A year earlier the
ratio was 40:30 in favour of WiFi.
The research shows that 26% of those who use a mobile network to access
the internet are with O2. Orange and Vodafone each take about 20% of the
market. T-Mobile and 3 have 14% and 12% respectively.
"But O2 isn't the first choice of the new wave users who've got dongles or
data cards to connect to the network," says Tim Johnson, Chief Analyst at
Point Topic. "Vodafone is top in dongle-user market share with 24% of
respondents. O2 comes in at 23% followed by Orange, T-Mobile and 3."
It is much more difficult to get users to identify their preferred WiFi
operators as most of them are more likely to think of WiFi access in terms
of where they do it rather than which network they use. That said BT
Openzone came top of the operators that were identified.
Churn is low, but not for everyone
Only 10% of mobile internet users say they plan to change operator in the
next 6 months, although this may relate to the lengthy contracts often
required for MI users. Those that are churning tend to be at the younger
and lower income end of the spectrum.
"There are operators that are losing out. Vodafone and Orange both have a
larger share of churners relative to their market share. 22% of
respondents who churned had been with Vodafone and 24% with Orange," says
Johnson.
Given that all the major mobile operators have coherent sets of high speed
data offerings based around handsets as well as dongles, Point Topic
believes it is likely that in the short term they will continue to
increase their market share versus WiFi.
The mobile operators have a big size advantage over the WiFi service
providers, who are relatively small and fragmented. But it is a lot
cheaper to send data over WiFi and, unlike the mobile networks, WiFi has
no problems with capacity. "So we see dual-mode operation, with mobile
broadband users defaulting to WiFi where it's available, as the way of the
future," says Johnson.