The Changing Consumer
- Digital natives thrive on instant gratification. They have grown up connected and are now driving the multimedia market.
- Digital immigrants have not grown up with internet and mobile communication but they are quickly adopting multimedia services.
- Business models can push – or sink – a multimedia service. Successful models will get users hooked on services by displaying the benefits and consistently delivering.
- Improved network capacity and the growth of internet services for mobile devices have spurred a dramatic increase in the number of consumers who want the internet wherever they go.
- Users don’t just want entertainment – they want services that help them in their everyday lives. More services are moving to the mobile phone, such as barcode readers, ticketing and payments.
- In high-growth markets a user’s first interaction with the internet is often via a handset; the mobile phone instantly becomes an important gateway to the web.
- Market demand for rich communication is already evident in the popularity of posting images and videos to online communities, video communication in services on PCs, and the growth of MMS and video traffic.
The mass market for multimedia is driven chiefly by digital natives: those who grew up with mobile phones and the internet. Digital natives crave interactivity and they function best when networked. Older generations, or digital immigrants, have already adopted many of the new behaviors driven by digital natives, setting in motion a rapid transformation of the entire media market.
Digital natives are also the force behind media fragmentation. They rip, burn, remix and share their media. They effortlessly multi-task and multi-session, simultaneously sharing files, instant-messaging, gaming, surfing the net and watching TV.
The demand for multimedia on any screen, anywhere, at any time, is rapidly picking up. This is obvious from latest user statistics that show the number of 30 to 40-year olds in Sweden, the US and the UK who use their mobile to access the web each week, has risen 2.5 percent to 10 percent in just four years.
