Popularity of MP3 players 'growing'
Mobile phone MP3 players are an increasingly popular way of listening to music, research out today found.
Users like having music on the go via a gadget which holds photos, games and make calls, market analysts TNS said.
Nearly a fifth of all mobile phone owners listen to music on them, a study of 6,800 people across 15 countries showed.
Of this group, 16% of all music listened to daily was via their phones, compared with 15% on a home stereo and 10% on an iPod or other MP3 player.
Car stereos and PCs at home were the most popular methods of listening to music, at 18% each.
Nearly half (47%) of these respondents listened to music on their mobiles while using public transport.
About a third (32%) listened while waiting for an appointment or meeting, and 23% listened to music on their mobiles in bed.
Music is the mobile phone application with most potential for growth, TNS said.
More than a third (35%) of all respondents said they wanted to use the function more in future.
People were put off downloading more songs onto their mobiles by poor quality sound and insufficient memory on the handsets.
Tacis Gavoyannis, global head of technology at TNS, said Korea and Japan had the largest percentage of music listened to on their mobile phones.
“I think looking into the future we will see an increase of music on the mobile phone and possibly a decrease in stereo usage,” Dr Gavoyannis said.
“I see the UK market getting higher numbers of digital music usage on mobile phones because there will be a tendency, especially with the youth market, to have one gadget with all your tools on it.”
The TNS survey was carried out in July and August this year among 6,800 16 to 49-year-olds who owned either a mobile phone, personal digital assistant or laptop and who accessed the Internet every week.
The countries included in the study were: Australia, Brazil, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, the UK and the United States.
