ABI Research: People think of MIDs as mobile phone replacements
By Dusan Belic on Wednesday, February 4th, 2009 at 8:15 AM PST In Research
During the November of last year, ABI Research carried out a survey of more than 1000 adult consumers in the United States to identify their attitudes toward netbooks and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs).
Some companies have sold MIDs as mobile phone replacements and apparently that marketing worked like a charm, with almost half of respondents agreeing with that pitch. On the other hand, 34% of people surveyed said they would continue to use a mobile phone.
ABI Research believes that some people will value a separate device with a bigger screen for the web browsing, that they can choose when to carry. They went on to add that more interesting promise offered by MIDs without cellular voice will be their repackaging in the form of specialized Internet-connected devices such as media players or PNDs.
According to ABI’s Philip Solis this is going to become a question for MID vendors and consumers alike. “There will be little difference between a smartphone such as the Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre which uses an OMAP 3 processor and a MID with cellular voice, except for screen size. Understanding of what consumers want from stand-alone MIDs without cellular voice will be important,” he added.
The results of the survey are summarized in a Research Brief titled “Consumer Impressions of Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs)” and you can get more information about it from here.
