30 percent of mobile music and mobile video users also own iPods

M:Metrics: US. The correlation between users of portable digital music players and mobile content. Owners of portable music devices, especially owners of the Apple iPod, are more than twice more likely than average mobile subscribers to use music and video applications on their mobile phone and to express a willingness to pay for such services in the future.

Whereas iPod owners comprise only 14.4 percent of the mobile phone market, they account for 29.5 percent of those who reported listening to music on their mobile phones and 30 percent of those who watched video on their phone. Additionally, this group was almost three times more likely than the average mobile subscriber to transfer music from their computer to their mobile phone. Owners of Apple iPods were more likely than owners of other portable media devices to turn to their mobile phone for music and video.

This data indicates that digital media consumers want to access their media from their phones, across a multitude of platforms. There is clearly demand for converged mobile devices among those who lead a digital lifestyle to enhance, not necessarily replace, their existing digital media devices.

The example of camera phones to illustrate his point: Nokia has become the world's largest manufacturer of digital cameras, but camera phones haven't destroyed demand for dedicated digital cameras. In a similar fashion, mobile music and video capabilities will become ubiquitous but are unlikely to 'kill the iPod.'

Usage of mobile video services are also more common among iPod owners than the industry average. These subscribers are more than twice more likely to watch live or streaming video, download a short video clip or watch mobile video.

Activity	Total Consumption	Percent of total that own iPods	Percent of total that own other digital music player brand
Watched mobile video	2,731,216	30.4%	26.6%
Transferred music from PC to phone	598,376	35.9%	30.6%
Own digital music player	52,060,593	51.4%	49.6%

In addition, iPod owners are twice more likely to or share a mobile video, either by sending it to a phone or to an e-mail address. M:Metrics also found that 15 percent of iPod owners said they were likely to pay for a mobile music service in the next year, compared to a market average of nine percent. Eleven percent said they would pay to download video clips, versus 6.5 percent.

Consumers' willingness to pay for mobile media presents a substantial market opportunity for converged digital media services. Companies that are developing digital media distribution businesses could see real profit from a sound mobile music strategy.

M:Metrics measures the consumption of mobile content and applications and benchmarks the performance of mobile operators, device manufacturers, platform providers and publishers using a multi-dimensional methodology that includes the largest monthly surveys of mobile subscribers in the U.S, the U.K. and Germany. The following are the results of its U.S. Benchmark Survey for the quarter ending February 28, 2006.

U.S. Mobile Subscriber Monthly Consumption of Content and Applications M:Metrics Benchmark Survey: February 2006
Activity	Subscribers (1000s)	Percent	Percent Change
Sent Text Message	64,296	34.7%	3.0%
Used Photo Messaging	19,659	10.6%	9.4%
Browsed News and Information	18,827	10.1%	-1.0%
Purchased Ringtone	18,635	10.0%	1.4%
Used Personal E-Mail	13,706	7.4%	-2.3%
Used Mobile Instant Messenger	12,070	6.5%	0.8%
Used Work E-Mail	8,163	4.4%	-3.7%
Purchased Wallpaper or Screensaver	7,292	3.9%	-1.1%
Downloaded Mobile Game	5,488	3.0%	-8.6%

Survey of U.S. mobile subscribers.

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