Correspondence: Hannu T. Verkasalo, Research Scientist, Networking Laboratory, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O. Box 3000, TKK FI-02015, Finland. Tel: +358 40 595 9663; Fax: + 358 9 451 2474; E-mail: hannu.verkasalo@tkk.fi

¹works as a research scientist at Helsinki University of Technology, Finland. Verkasalo has published several conference and journal papers on the evolution of mobile service market, and currently he is pursuing a doctoral dissertation on the emergence of the mobile internet. Verkasalo has particularly focused on empirical mobile service research utilising the recently developed handset-based research method. In addition to research work, Hannu Verkasalo gives lectures on network economics, operator business and telecommunication regulation. Verkasalo has also closely collaborated with Nokia in mobile end-user research. Verkasalo holds a Lic.Sc. (Technology) degree from Helsinki University of Technology, an MSc (Business Administration) degree from Helsinki School of Economics and an M.Soc.Sc. (Statistics) degree from the University of Helsinki.

Received 22 November 2007; Revised 22 November 2007; Published online 7 January 2008.

Abstract

This paper carried out an extensive empirical study on mobile service usage in Finland. A newly developed handset-based mobile service research platform was utilised with automatic data mining procedures. The approach provided a scalable and novel market research approach. A typical Finnish panelist spends a daily average of 33 min with a smartphone. Most of this time is allocated on voice calls (33 per cent) and messaging (24 per cent), the overall communication usage representing 60 per cent of all usage time. Younger people and men are still the most active users of smartphones. The Finnish market has developed particularly in the use of packet data and person-to-person services. Handset bundling has indirectly driven usage because more data, voice and SMS packet plans are available. Handset bundling is also reflected in the increased use of operator-specific clients. ABPU (average billing per user) levels correlate with data, voice and SMS service usage, whereas no clear correlation between ABPU and (free) offline service usage exists. People still consider the pricing and technical implementation of the mobile WWW and email as bottlenecks for wider mobile internet usage. WLAN traffic already represents a significant share of aggregated traffic volume, although the number of WLAN-capable phones in the panel is small. Mobile data volume is evolving gradually towards multimedia and infotainment from mere static content and communication. Three distinctive end-user segments were identified when demonstrating usage-based clustering of users. The handset-based research approach has many advantages to alternative market research tools.