Dynamics of Mobile Service Adoption

This study utilized a newly developed handsetbased mobile end-user research platform and obtained data from 548 Finnish smartphone users in 2006. In addition to descriptive adoption statistics, a path analysis model is developed that explains mobile service adoption contingent on a set of explanatory variables. The paper finds that user intentions have a strong impact on consequent adoption of the service. What is more, perceived hedonic benefits from the service are the strongest factor driving user intentions to use the service. The perceived technical capability to use the service and the role of the surrounding social network explain little why early-adopter users intend to use services. Interestingly multimedia services are strongly driven by newer more capable handsets and mobile Internet browsing benefits significantly from block or flat-rate (instead of usage-based) pricing plans for transmitted data. The paper develops several indices that measure time-varying characteristics of mobile services. IntroductIon Mobile services have evolved quite a lot from mere communication oriented services (circuitswitched voice, text messaging, voice mailbox) to today’s multimedia, content retrieval, browsing and other advanced services. The mobile Internet (see Funk 2004) is emerging and the IP-based service delivery is likely to hit the mobile mass market domain very soon. Overlay networks existing already in the Internet (Clark et al. 2006) may have spill-over effects to the mobile industry. The mobile Internet scenario contrasts sharply with the dominant, vertically-oriented way of doing mobile business (see e.g. Karlson et al. 2003, Verkasalo 2007a and Vesa 2005). The emergence of the mobile Internet is driven by the wide-scale adoption of smartphones (i.e. converged devices) along with improvements in both cellular (GSM and 3G) and alternative (e.g. WiFi) radio networks. In terms of data services the same service evolution trends have been seen in the “wired” Internet earlier that can be seen in the mobile domain today. For example,