| 20 February 2004 - A recent survey
of In-Stat/MDR's wireless panel indicates moderate
interest in Push-to-Talk (P2T) technology. Only
about 8% of survey respondents say they use it today;
however, of those respondents not currently using
the service, half expressed interest in using P2T
in the future. Therefore, the high-tech market research
firm's study does not reflect unanimous support
for P2T.
Nextel has found great success in being the primary
provider of this walkie-talkie-type service for
many years. The technology recently became available,
and allows cellular providers to offer a competitive
service. Today, Verizon Wireless offers its Push-to-Talk
service, Sprint has its PCS ReadyLink service,
and Alltel now offers Touch2Talk. Most recently,
a few European providers have also announced intentions
to launch these services overseas.
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In-Stat/MDR advises that wireless service providers
new to offering P2T may want to go after a different
user base than the one that Nextel currently controls,
as current user satisfaction is extremely high and it
will, therefore, likely be difficult to lure Nextel's
customers away. The one factor current users are less
satisfied with is price, and this represents an area
where other providers could potentially compete.
The survey also found the following:
- Current P2T subscribers primarily use the service
for work purposes (personal communication is secondary).
In contrast, respondents who are interested in using
the service think they would use it more for personal
reasons than for business reasons.
- More respondents on the panel are interested in
potentially subscribing to the service from Verizon
Wireless than from any other provider.
- Although P2T can enable group communication, current
subscribers primarily use their P2T service for communicating
with one person only.
This Market Alert is drawn from the In-Stat/MDR report,
"The
Outlook for Push-to-Talk Services in the US",
which discusses usage patterns of current P2T users
(i.e., personal versus business, one-to-one versus group
communication, and frequency of use), and their satisfaction
with the service (overall, and individually, regarding
price and call set-up times). It also identifies the
percentage of respondents who are interested in using
P2T service in the future, their intended usage patterns,
the carriers from which they would be willing to subscribe
to this service, and their willingness to pay. Finally,
it attempts to parallel the market for personal walkie-talkie
devices, and talks about how usage of these products
might foretell the demand for P2T services in the future.
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