3G Users Spending More Already

December 12, 2004 - source: BWCS

Despite the relative newness of consumer 3G services, it is already clear that customers on UMTS networks are spending more than those on GPRS, according to findings from mobile infrastructure platform developer Bango. The company claimed in a press release yesterday that users on the Vodafone and 3, 3G networks are browsing more widely and downloading more content than users of traditional 2.5G handsets.

Bango goes on to claim that 3G customers are spending an average of 60% more than their second generation counterparts. The most popular area of spend so far is on multimedia content. This is partly a result of such early users naturally falling out of the high-spend category and partly a result of the mobile operators targeting such services. There is no doubt that for the early adopter market, 3G content is being positioned as premium content.

Bango reports that the most successful content providers in the UK are those supplying sports videos, comedy clips and of course adult services. Whilst 3G portals are much more content rich than their 2.5G counterparts, the new brand of users are apparently showing that they are more willing to browse away from the portals in search of third party content suppliers, with video and music suppliers faring particularly well in this category.

According to Bango's CEO, Ray Anderson, "Our usage data is already showing that fast and easy access to content gets consumers to try more services and spend more money." Bango provides the services to ensure easy access to mobile internet content, collection of micro-payments and the tracking of user spending patterns.