A year of heavy marketing of mobile broadband has pushed the mobile phone networks ahead of Wi-Fi hotspots as the most popular way of accessing the internet on the move.  Point Topic’s recent survey* of mobile broadband users shows that the UK mobile phone companies have managed to grow their market share to 47 per cent of users accessing the internet away from home or work.  This compares to 42 per cent who prefer Wi-Fi hotspots.  A year earlier the ratio was 40:30 in favour of Wi-Fi.

The research shows that 26 per cent of those who use a mobile network to access the internet are with O2.  Orange and Vodafone each take about 20 per cent of the market.  T-Mobile and 3 have 14 per cent and 12 per cent respectively.

“But O2 isn’t the first choice of the new wave users who’ve got dongles or data cards to connect to the network,” says Tim Johnson, Chief Analyst at Point Topic.  “Vodafone is top in dongle-user market share with 24 per cent of respondents.  O2 comes in at 23 per cent followed by Orange, T-Mobile and 3.”

It is much more difficult to get users to identify their preferred Wi-Fi operators as most of them are more likely to think of Wi-Fi access in terms of where they do it rather than which network they use.  That said BT Openzone came top of the operators that were identified.

Only 10 per cent of mobile internet users say they plan to change operator in the next 6 months, although this may relate to the lengthy contracts often required for MI users.  Those that are churning tend to be at the younger and lower income end of the spectrum.

“There are operators that are losing out.  Vodafone and Orange both have a larger share of churners relative to their market share.  22 per cent of respondents who churned had been with Vodafone and 24 per cent with Orange,” says Johnson.

Given that all the major mobile operators have coherent sets of high speed data offerings based around handsets as well as dongles, Point Topic believes it is likely that in the short term they will continue to increase their market share versus Wi-Fi.

The mobile operators have a big size advantage over the Wi-Fi service providers, who are relatively small and fragmented.  But it is a lot cheaper to send data over Wi-Fi and, unlike the mobile networks, Wi-Fi has no problems with capacity.  “So we see dual-mode operation, with mobile broadband users defaulting to Wi-Fi where it’s available, as the way of the future,” says Johnson.
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