• Age ranged from 10 to 78 years of age, average age, 35 years.
• Gender: 69% female, 31% male.
• 35% from NSW, 24% from VIC, 18% from QLD, 23% rest of Australia.
• Residential status: 45% single, with most living independently, 37% married, and 18% in a couple but not married.
• Income: The top three weekly income bands were <$50/week (10%), $201–$300/week (9%), and $1,000–$1,500/week (11%).

• 49% owned a mobile phone for over seven years.
• 34% of participants noted that they owned a second mobile phone and/or SIM, with over half of these aged 22–40 years old and 62% female.
• Telecommunications provider: Optus (35%) and Telstra (25%) were in the same positions as the last survey and were still the dominant telecommunications providers with the participants of this survey. Vodafone (16%) just took the third spot back from 3 (15%).
• 26% of survey respondents noted that they would prefer to be with a different telecommunications provider.
• Bill payment: Nearly 85% paid their own mobile phone bill.
• There was a significant increase in the number of respondents who were on prepaid (41%) while the remaining 58% had a monthly bill. Once again, the younger demographic tends to have prepaid, with the majority of over 25 year olds on a monthly plan.
• 65% were on capped plans, another significant increase from the previous survey.
• Monthly spend: 70% spent <$60, 19% spent $21–$31, and 14% of respondents spent more than $100 per month on their mobile phone bill.
• Brand: 47% of participants currently own a Nokia mobile phone (same as last year), followed by Motorola and Sony Ericsson (equal with 12%), with Samsung getting closer in third place with 11%.
• 25% of respondents stated that their phone was 3G, down from 30% last year. However, more people didn’t know if they had a 3G phone or not (20%) than in Survey 3 (11%).

• Most participants identified voice (84%) and SMS (84%) as key expenditure items on their monthly phone bill, followed by MMS (22%), buying content (9%), and email (7%).
• 9% of respondents that did not buy content via their phone bill purchased content through an alternative channel, e.g., credit card statement.
• There was a slight decline in buying content compared to previous surveys, while there appears to be some services like MMS and email where customers are seeing value in spending additional dollars.
• The decline in buying content monthly should be interpreted with caution as it may be a reflection of the increasing amount of free content available, and increasing familiarity with technologies like Bluetooth that allow the free transfer of content between mobile phone users.
• 73% used their mobile phone mainly or exclusively for personal use.
• Voice and SMS dominate as the key methods of communication across all groups.
• SMS and MMS are most popular as a means of communicating with family and friends.

• Overall, 50% of respondents had purchased and/or subscribed to information services in the last 12 months. The current figure is still surprisingly high, especially given that, as explained previously, the increased amount of content that can be accessed for free and the change in billing options make it more difficult to assign direct costs to content and information.
• 36% of participants stated that they had purchased or subscribed to information services on their mobile phone, while 33% of respondents stated that they purchased mobile content in the last 12 months.
• More than 50% of participants became aware of new mobile content via the Internet, then close friends, on the phone menu, and via TV.
• 48% of participants purchased content via the Internet from a PC, 17% via the carrier’s portal, and 12% from the mobile phone menu.
• Of those that became aware of the content via the mobile phone, 3 had the highest rate of customers (31%), followed by Optus (25%) and Telstra (25%) in equal second. However, Telstra’s customers were more likely to become aware of new content via marketing from the telephone company (31%), followed by Optus (29%).
• The top three content types purchased were games (43%), true tones (42%) and wallpapers (33%).
• Digital music downloads continue to rapidly grow. In the last 2 years, the proportion of respondents who have purchased digital content downloads has increased by 113%. Other growth areas in the last 2 years were true tones (173% growth) and games (171% growth).
• Digital music downloads was again ranked first with an average of 9 downloads in the last 12 months. SMS alerts also ranked high with a mean of 8 SMS alerts.
• Compared to the number of units purchased in Survey 3, SMS alerts increased by 60%, games 50%, and digital content downloads 29%.
• Respondents on the 3 and Virgin networks were most likely to purchase mobile content, Telstra customers were more likely not to.
• While gender didn’t predict content purchasing, those on capped plans were more likely to purchase content.
• Although news (53%), weather (50%) and sport (34%) continue to dominate the information accessed over the last 12 months, there has been an increase in the percentage of respondents using almost all types of information. The greatest growth since Survey 3 has occurred in maps (347%), restaurant/café guides and reviews (174%), and TV listings (93%).
• Respondents on the 3 and Vodafone networks were most likely to use information services, those on Optus, Virgin or ‘Other’ were less likely.
• A higher proportion of respondents from the 26–40-year-old age group accessed more information on mobile phones than other groups.
• Of the 70% of respondents who said that they don’t use their mobile for anything but SMS and voice calls, 60% said that they don’t care and just want to use it as a phone. 7% didn’t know how to access content, 11% didn’t know how to connect to the Internet on their phone, and 14% don’t know what the internet does. 26% of people said that they don’t get value out of information or content on their mobile phone.

• The most popular requests for future mobile content were digital music downloads (30%), games (27%) and wallpapers (25%).
• The most popular requests for future mobile information were maps (31%), news (29%) and weather content (28%).
• Again, SMS (62%) was the most desired application for future use, email (49%) came second, and then MMS (42%)

Communities on the PC
• 83% of respondents stated that they used at least one of the listed online communities on their PC.
• MSN Messenger was the most popular computer community (46%), followed by YouTube (45%) and Facebook (28%).

Communities on the Mobile Phone
• In almost an exact reverse of the above, only 16% of respondents stated that they used at least one of the listed online communities on their mobile phone.
• MSN Messenger was again the most popular mobile community (8%), followed by Facebook (5%) and MySpace (3%).

Creating and Sharing Content for the Mobile Phone
• 33% of respondents said that they had created content on their mobile phones to share with others. 96% shared photos, 41% shared videos and 32% shared music.
• MMS (63%) and Bluetooth (61%) were the main methods of sharing content.
• 50% said that they share content once a month or more often.
• 55% of respondents said that they had used content on their mobile phone created by others. 90% had viewed photos, 49% music and 32% video. Those under 25 years old were more likely to have created content to share with others.