Nokia falling out of favour with teenagers

By Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 08 April 2008 04:53

Strategy

A survey of the media usage, consumption behaviour and brand preference of over 50,000 teenagers across the globe should be a goldmine for marketers: and it shows them starting to favour Samsung and Sony Ericsson cellphones over those from market leader Nokia. They are also shunning email in favour of instant messaging

The survey was the second carried out by Sulake of Finland, operator of the Habbo social networking site for teenagers. It gathered and analysed online responses from over 58,000 of them between the ages of 11 and 18 in 31 countries.

A major focus of the survey was how teens communicate and it found that instant messaging was the most popular communication tool in most of the countries: used by 76 percent of respondents. "Though 72 percent of teens still hold active email accounts, the majority of communication with peers is no longer conducted over email," Sulake said. "The survey revealed that email is generally reserved by teens more for non-personal needs such as school or work, or correspondence with family members."

While Nokia is still the number one brand globally, Sulake said: "It is clear that Nokia has lost some favour with teens to Sony Ericsson and Samsung since autumn 2006, when the previous Global Habbo Youth Survey was conducted. Despite still being the favoured handset in 15 of the 31 countries polled, Nokia loses out to Sony Ericsson in markets such as the UK, Germany, Denmark and Switzerland. In all of these markets Nokia ranked first in 2006. In the UK both Sony Ericsson and Samsung are rated higher than Nokia. This suggests that brand loyalty to Nokia, amongst teens globally, hasn't increased alongside Nokia's market share, which reached 40 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007.

The survey also showed mobile phone usage to be the most significant growth area compared to other topics surveyed. "Teens are now regularly using their mobile handsets as entertainment devices. In the 2006 survey only 38 percent of teens used their handset to listen to music; now 71 percent of teenagers are using their mobiles as a portable mp3 player.

Text messaging remains the most used phone function: 88 percent of teens regularly communicating via SMS. But the survey shows that teens are also using entertainment applications much more than they were in 2006. 70 percent are now using their mobile to take photos and videos, an 11 percentage points increase compared to 2006. 64 percent now play games on their mobile compared to 51 percent in 2006. Over a quarter of teens also use their mobile to surf the net, email and send instant messages.

Sulake concludes: "The teen mobile phone market is competitive and lucrative; but it is clear that by developing phones that deliver an engaging user experience across applications, such as texting, listening to MP3s and playing games, mobile brands can attract a new teen audience to their devices.

The survey results are available for purchase - curiously only in hardcopy format -  for €475, by contacting marketinsight@sulake.com. Sulake promises that further results on different topics will be published in the sulake.com blog   in coming weeks.

Not surprisingly the survey found that '"brand familiarity clearly affects teens' choices as consumers, with 74 percent saying that familiar brands guide their purchasing decisions." Australians will be pleased to know that, for boys, local garment brand Billabong is up there in the top three alongside Nike and Adidas!