WASHINGTON-The continued growth of the paging industry can be attributed mainly to a sharp rise in consumer-oriented users over the past five years, according to the study “PageTrac ’97: Consumer Trends in Paging” released last week by The Strategis Group.
The study identified a “radical” shift in the composition of paging industry customers, from business to personal users.
In the past five years, the study said the number of personal paging users rose from 4 million to more than 21 million, increasing the group’s percentage of the total pager-user pie from 23 percent in 1993 to 46 percent in 1997. The number of intense business users grew from 9.3 million to 12.5 million in the same time period.
Some 70 percent of all new paging users sign up for personal reasons, the report said. A personal user was defined as a paging subscriber who uses a pager for business less than 20 percent of the time.
“It is no surprise that subscriber growth is being fueled by consumer adoption,” said John Zahurancik, paging analyst for The Strategis Group.
“However, the pace of change from paging as a business tool to paging as a personal communications device has been incredible.”
Another interesting finding of the study was that the average age of these personal paging users dropped over time. Half of personal users were younger than 29, while only 18 percent of business users fall into this same age category.
The study reported that while 44 percent of all paging users don’t know from whom they purchase their paging services, personal paging users are much more likely to know since 92 percent of these users pay for their own service.
These findings significantly raise the clout of the consumer market in the eyes of paging carriers, upping the ante on the importance of personal user customer service.
“The expansion of personal paging presents new challenges to the industry,” said Elliot Hamilton, vice president of North American telecommunications at The Strategis Group.
“Operators must implement strategies that strengthen customer relations and move beyond simple numeric paging.”
