World Wide Worx in conjunction with First National Bank n South Africa have released findings from a study done on the mobile internet in South Africa.

The study has some revealing highlights:

• Mobile Internet in SA appears to be driven more by specific apps (MXit, Facebook) rather than browsing from the mobile
• A majority of mobile phone users have internet capable devices and apps (such as email clients) but are not using them either due to cost concerns or ignorance – WWWorx, MD, Goldstuck: “It is quite startling to find how many have these features on their phones but don’t use them, either out of ignorance or because of cost concerns.”

“The truth is, many people with these applications on their phones do no use them and do not even know how to use them,” says Goldstuck. “It is clear that the cellphone has the potential to take South Africans across the digital divide, but the phones themselves need to become more user-friendly, and a vast amount of consumer education is needed.”

World Wide Worx has also gone ahead to publish a framework for the development of the Mobile Internet in SA.

The framework consist of three tiers, namely:

Tier 1: The WAP Internet (access to WAP gateways, which includes mobile versions of brand sites, mobile versions of traditional and new media publisher sites, downloads of ringtones, games and other content, which may only involve a single link from the phone; the typical user of the WAP Internet is not always aware of using the Internet).

Tier 2: The Mobile Application Internet (usage of “stand-alone” applications on the phone that rely on data feeds, such as Mxit, Gmail, and Maps; the typical user is aware of using data, but not of fully accessing the Internet)

Tier 3: Mobile Web Browsing (usage of a web browser to access the World Wide Web from the phone – understood by most users to represent full Internet access).

The framework was put together by World Wide Worx managing director Arthur Goldstuck and Mobile Marketing Association founding chairman Rick Joubert.

“Defining the mobile Internet is important,” says Joubert. “Neither one of the mobile Internet usage tiers is any more important than the other, but decision-makers and marketers should understand the nature of the end user experience as clearly as possible.”