Abstract
The uptake of advanced mobile data services in South Africa has been slow, even though it is currently the largest cellular market and has one of the most advanced mobile telecommunication industries in Africa. This apparent contradiction forms the subject of this article. It presents the findings from a survey in South Africa that looked at the adoption of a number of data services, including content services, web browsing, email, MMS, mobile games, mobile banking and mobile chats. It was found that, apart from SMS, users were indeed generally slow to adopt any of the 3G data services. The article lists and discusses the major obstacles and inhibitors to this adoption as mentioned by the respondents. It also reports on what mobile users perceived could be done to promote the adoption of mobile services. This research should, therefore, provide useful insights to researchers interested in mobile technology adoption in Africa as well as the providers of mobile data services.
Highlights
The mobile phone, or cell phone as it is commonly called in Africa, is regarded as a ubiquitous multipurpose communication and computing device, with penetration rates of above 90% of South Africa’s population
This research reports on a survey that looked at the use and adoption of a number of data services, namely short messaging service (SMS), downloading of ringtones, content services, web browsing, email, multimedia messaging (MMS), mobile games, mobile banking and mobile chats
South Africa has an advanced mobile telecommunication industry and boasts a high penetration rate with more than 83% of the South African population currently uses mobile phones
Summary
The mobile phone, or cell phone as it is commonly called in Africa, is regarded as a ubiquitous multipurpose communication and computing device, with penetration rates of above 90% of South Africa’s population. Only the following mobile data services were considered: cell phone banking, downloading ring tones, games and logos, downloading content such as weather, sport and/or news, web browsing, accessing email, mobile gaming/video, short messaging service (SMS), multimedia messaging (MMS) and online chats such as MSN messenger and Mxit These services were selected since they form part of the most popular and advanced mobile data services available in South Africa. Despite the fact that the use of mobile devices is the fastest growing technology ever seen in South Africa, the use of advanced mobile data services has still not touched the lives of most cellular phone users (Goldstuck, 2005). Other factors inhibiting use of mobile data services include lack of business requirements, incompatibility of handsets, lack of skills and knowledge concerning the service and poor design interface of the devices (Singh, 2003)
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