Strategy Analytics: Poor Mobile Portal Usability Costs US Operators $110 Million in Missed Revenue Opportunity From Mobile Gaming

Evaluating the mobile game download process of leading US network providers in a recently released Portal Evaluation report series, the Strategy Analytics Wireless Media Lab concludes that Verizon Wireless offers the best game download experience, beating offerings from AT&T/Cingular, Helio and Sprint. As described in the report, “Cingular Trails Mobile Portal Leaders Sprint and Verizon Wireless by 20 Index Points,” participants from Strategy Analytics’ user panel managed to discover the game download area in the fastest time, purchase a game in the least amount of clicks, and showed the highest levels of satisfaction when using the Verizon Wireless service.

“Participants showed the most dissatisfaction with the AT&T/Cingular service,” commented Paul Brown, User Experience Analyst at Strategy Analytics. “On average it took users three times as many clicks to access the games store using the AT&T/Cingular service compared to Verizon Wireless.”

David Kerr, Vice President of the Global Wireless Practice, added, “While the estimated US revenue from mobile gaming is projected to be over $520 Million in 2007, operators are missing out on over $100 Million in revenue as a result of inferior usability. Improvements to the purchase process from content discovery and preview to billing are required.”

Other findings from the report include:

Cingular received the lowest rating across all four categories: Ease of Task Completion, Process Logic, Time Taken and Ease of Task Duplication.

Verizon Wireless topped user satisfaction ratings with a score of 91/100.

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