Saturday, September 18, 2010

App Buyers Prefer Carrier or Credit Card Billing

There's an interesting bit of data in a recent Nielsen survey of users about smartphone and feature phone applications and behavior.

Specifically, users have clear preferences when it comes to how they want to pay for mobile apps, opening a wedge for service providers who want to increase the amount of commerce and payment services they can support and derive revenue from.

Given that users’ primary concerns are convenience and security, Nielsen found that users would prefer to have charges appear on their mobile service provider or credit card bills.

The immediate issue is that the most-popular app stores are not controlled or sponsored by mobile operators, but by the handset suppliers. Many think that is a good thing.

But the survey data also suggests a potential new role for mobile service providers as suppliers of third-party billing services. About 32 percent of both smartphone and feature phone users say they prefer to have payments billed on their mobile service statements.

About 31 percent say they currently pay by credit card, but only 24 percent they prefer to pay that way. About 20 percent say they use PayPal, and that's the same percentage of users who say they prefer to pay that way.

About 13 percent pay using iTunes, but just 11 percent say they prefer to pay that way.

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