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Combined Mobile/Home Phones Will Be a Hard Sell, Analysys Survey Reveals

Posted on: Monday, 13 February 2006, 12:00 CST

New fixed-mobile convergence (FMC) solutions based on combined mobile/home phones are likely to generate considerable interest from consumers but such interest will be difficult to convert into sales in the face of strong competition from solutions based on mobile phones only, according to a new report, Consumer Demand for Fixed-Mobile Convergence Solutions: a survey of end users, published by Analysys, the global advisers on telecoms, IT and media (http://research.analysys.com).

The report is based on a survey conducted for Analysys Research by TNS, which had over 3000 respondents across France, Germany and Great Britain, and revealed that 13% of respondents were very interested in purchasing a combined mobile/home phone. However, in France and Germany even more respondents (18% and 21%, respectively) would prefer to use their mobile phone all the time if their mobile operator could offer them discounts on mobile calls made at home.

"O2 has offered home-zone pricing in Germany for several years but was joined in doing so by Vodafone in June 2005," notes Katrina Bond, principal analyst at Analysys Research and lead author of the report. "We expect such offers to spread elsewhere in Europe and present strong competition for solutions based on combined mobile/home phones, such as BT Fusion, which works like a mobile phone but automatically diverts the call to a BT broadband line when the user is at home." BT Fusion was launched on a limited basis in the UK the same month that Vodafone launched its fixed-mobile substitution (FMS) product in Germany.

According to the Analysys survey, 37% of respondents said that they were not perfectly happy with their current choice of phone types. And 29% of survey respondents revealed that they would be deterred by solutions that charged people who call them as though they were calling a mobile phone.

"Both combined mobile/home phones and mobile home-zone pricing offer customers the advantages of being able to use a single phone wherever they are, with discounted call prices when the phone is used in the home environment," states Bond. "This is clearly very appealing to consumers. However, the challenge will be to overcome their inertia by offering and marketing solutions that give them the convenience and lower call costs they crave, without making them incur large costs for special handsets or base stations, and without making the people who call them pay more."

The report provides detailed analysis of the unique, independent, end-user survey, enabling equipment manufacturers and service providers to more effectively design and market their FMC and FMS voice services. For more information, telephone Analysys on +44 (0) 1223 460600 or email research@analysys.com.

An extended version of this press release and an executive summary are available to journalists on request.

Source: Business Wire

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