Focus-group studies by Ericsson have revealed significant interest in push to talk among European and Asian users, with all subjects agreeing that it is a fun and effective way of sharing short, informal messages.

Push to talk over Cellular (PoC) is an emerging standard for a two-way "walkie-talkie" type service that works on certain mobile handsets, enabling users to strike up instant conversations with a single contact, or with more than one at the same time. Contacts can either be selected when making a call, or chosen in advance by defining a permanent group on the handset or over a web interface. The convenience of push to talk has already been recognized in the USA, where non-standardized solutions are widely used for frequent, spontaneous communication sessions between close family members, friends or colleagues. And now qualitative studies by Ericsson Consumer Lab have indicated that there is also demand in Europe and Asia for a fully interoperable push to talk solution, such as Ericsson Instant Talk (see link below). The studies looked at the views of 21 focus groups in Sweden, Italy and the UK, plus 12 more in Singapore and Hong Kong. There were approximately four subjects per group, with individual user profiles dictating each group's classification as one of three types: private, family or business. Although the groups showed slight differences in perceptions and opinions of push to talk, all agreed that it is a fun and effective way of sharing short, informal messages.

In both Europe and Asia private users derived an emotional benefit from being able to spontaneously communicate with their friends. As Chiara, a 29-year-old Italian university student, said: "I liked the way I could communicate with my campus friends all at the same time. Push to talk brings people closer together." Private users also identified similarities between push to talk and other services available on the internet, such as chatting. The option of "on the go" voice chatting as a complement to other mobile services was therefore very appealing to them. For family users, push to talk was perceived to be a useful coordination, control, support and safety tool. Mothers felt that knowing their children were literally only the push of a button away gave them less to worry about, while they also viewed the service as a handy way of sending their kids reminders. Zafer, a 51-year-old secretary from the UK, said: "Push to talk would save me time, as instead of calling my children one-by-one to get them in for dinner, I would be able to reach them all at once." Business users in both Europe and Asia felt push to talk to be an efficient way of holding short communication sessions, as they appreciated the synchronicity of information flow. They also thought that push to talk communication could replace traditional "walkie-talkies", and therefore mean carrying one less device. In addition, business users felt that push to talk's extended coverage and its elimination of the risk of intrusion (since a separate and safe channel is used) were clear benefits. Notably, all the groups agreed that for widespread uptake of push to talk services to become a reality, full interoperability between different handsets and operator networks is a necessity. Many of the push to talk services that have sprung up around the world are proprietary solutions that are not in fact interoperable. But this key stumbling block to mass-market uptake will be overcome by the Push to talk over Cellular standard, which Ericsson's own solution, Instant Talk, fully conforms to.