Major regional survey reveals preferences and concerns of Middle East cellular users

The online poll, conducted by Maktoob Research in May 2007, canvassed the opinions of 3669 cellular subscribers of various nationalities, aged 18 and above, across four countries with 1260 respondents participating from Egypt, 1131 from Jordan, 895 from KSA and 383 from the UAE.

It covered topics ranging from levels of satisfaction related to mobile operator services, types of subscriptions, preferred brands of mobile phones, preferred features in mobile phones, preferred mobile content, and fears and concerns related to e-commerce.

'We set out on this study to determine what residents in the Middle East truly feel about the services that are being offered to them by local cellular operators,' explained Tamara Deprez, Maktoob Research Director.

'In the process, we've also discovered preferences of people in this region towards services offered by different mobile phone brands and what features they appreciate the most in their mobile phones.'

Among the key findings of the survey are:

•While Jordan's Umniah (75%), Egypt's Vodafone (74%) and KSA's Mobily (70%) beat local competitors to become the highest scorers in overall customer satisfaction in their own countries, some of these, notably Mobily and Umniah do not hold the largest market shares. Mobily ranks second in the KSA while Umniah with 20% of the market share ranks third.

•73% of respondents in the UAE claim to be satisfied with services offered by their mobile operators while only 64% of respondents in Jordan stated the same. 63% of respondents claimed to be satisfied in Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

•Nokia is predominantly the most preferred mobile phone manufacturer (overall 80%). It is followed by Sony Ericsson (overall 6%) and Motorola and Samsung (overall 4% each).

•The ten most important mobile features as rated by respondents were a camera (66%), bluetooth (64%), SMS service (60%), a clock (54%), the vibrating alert (53%), an MP3 player (52%), 3G connectivity (50%), call holding (47%), GPRS/WAP connectivity (47%) and the MMS service (47%). Respondents in the UAE rated the MP3 player in a mobile phone 4th most important among the ten most important features while respondents in Saudi Arabia found it the least important.

•79% of users across the four countries are not currently subscribed to any mobile content services. When asked whether they would be interested in receiving mobile content in future, 48% agreed. Surprisingly, when asked whether they would be willing to pay for the services, only 5% of UAE respondents agreed. No respondents from any other country were willing to pay.

•Breaking/latest news, Islamic content, business, sport, computers, stock market, financial services, romance/love, weather and gossip are the top contents that respondents currently subscribe to. Respondents interested in receiving content in future, rated breaking/latest news, Islamic content, computers, weather, romance/love, sport, music, business and movies as their top preferences.

•The top three e-commerce related activities performed online are downloading of software (55%), multimedia downloads (39%) and making online calls (35%). 35% of UAE respondents make calls despite the VOIP ban that's in place.

•Only 21% respondents thought the internet was a safe place to execute financial transactions. Meanwhile, only 31% respondents felt absolutely unafraid to divulge their credit card details online.

As the telecommunications industry forges ahead with newer technology and ground-breaking innovation, the Maktoob Research Study provides a valuable insight into the needs of cellular users in important markets in the Middle East.