The survey, compiled by global management consultancy A.T. Kearney, revealed that despite 55 percent of mobile users being aware of 3G's service capabilities, only a quarter of them were interested in using the technology.
"These results indicate the challenge the industry faces in overcoming market skepticism and providing consumers with a compelling reason to upgrade to 3G," said A.T. Kearney principal Mark Higgins. "They also indicate how crucial the business market will be in providing carriers with revenue streams from any initial deployment of 3G networks."
The report also revealed Australians that do want 3G capability wanted it for different reasons than most users around the world. A whopping 94 percent of Australians who expressed interest in 3G want to use it to access video and picture messages, whereas globally only one in three want it for that reason.
"The fact that Australian interest in 3G is dominated by video/pictures indicates that Australia might be good adopters of next wave services such as MMS - if issues around handset availability and pricing can be overcome," said Higgens.
The preferred use for 3G globally is faster Internet access, nominated by 45 percent of respondents. Only three percent of Australian respondents who wanted 3G said they wanted faster Internet access. Only three percent of Australians wanted it to access music services, compared to 21 percent globally.
The AT Kearney report claimed the Australian SMS market was reaching saturation point, with more than half of all 19-34 year olds using SMS at least once a day. The percentage of respondents who sent an SMS at least once a week or more fell by two percent in Australia over the last six months - however 28 percent of Australians interviewed indicated they intended to increase their SMS usage. The report also pointed out that Australia was the only country to register a drop in SMS advertising - 17 percent of users had received SMS advertisements over the past six months, down from 19 percent at the start of 2002.
In a worrying result for telcos pushing premium SMS services, 77 percent of Australians claimed they never send premium priced messages.
This report follows a recent report from Datamonitor claiming that telcos should shelve 3G plans because of a long wait for a return on investment. A similar wet-blanket has been thrown over perceived MMS hype by the World Wireless Forum, which claimed that the MMS market will only reach 200 million messages by 2004, well down on some forecasters' predictions of one billion messages.
