Many factors influence consumers’ decisions to buy one mobile phone over the other – but it seems that embedded content is an increasingly important one.
A survey by independent app store GetJar has found that brand remains the key purchase decision factor (28% respondents), followed some way behind by user experience (17%).
But coming up in third place is embedded content, which GetJar says is now more important in purchase decisions than price, design or even touchscreen capability.
Ilja Laurs, founder and CEO of GetJar Networks, said that a phone’s user interface and brand are dominant factors for deciding which handset consumers choose.
"The big change in consumer preference we see within this survey is the importance they are placing on content," he said.
The survey asked respondents to rank a list of 10 phone features by order of importance including brand, screen size/resolution, user experience/phone software, phone memory, quality of camera, price, touchscreen, music player, embedded content and overall design/look and feel.
Those taking part in the poll, conducted across the 130 countries in the GetJar network, were also asked to grade each of those features individually on a five-level scale of importance.
The content that comes with the handset placed third with 12 per cent of respondents worldwide saying it is "extremely important" to their choice of new handset ahead of phone memory (8%), price (5%) and design (7%).
While the poll showed increased demand for embedded content across all the major international regions, it is US consumers that appear to place it higher on their list of priorities than those in Europe.
In the US 60 per cent of respondents said it was "extremely important" to their choice of handset compared to 47 per cent in Europe.
The findings also indicate that the uptake of new handsets will be faster in Europe, with only 25 per cent of those surveyed saying they will not get a new phone this year compared to 40 per cent of US consumers polled.
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