New research from TNS shows that mobile users across the world want one thing from device manufactures – better battery life. Consumers are definitely interested in converging devices and new features, but as we pointed out with phones capable of playing music, consumers will not accept these new features at the expense of battery life.

TNS asked 7,000 mobile users in 15 countries regarding their preferences for device capabilities and features. Over 75% of respondents said better battery life is the main feature they want from phones, PDAs and similar devices.

For converged devices (with a phone), the top required feature in 14 of the 15 was “two days of battery life during active use”. In China, the 15th country, respondents most requested “20 Gigabytes of memory” as the key feature in the future. Along the same lines, battery life was listed as one of the top reasons “consumers do not use games, music, and TV applications on their mobile more frequently”.

Carl Geppert, the Communications & Media National Sector Leader for KPMG, gives a great overview of the growing problem of billing and tracking for carriers as sales of mobile content increase in a new article. Carriers setup their internal tracking systems to handle consumers’ usage of one type of product – voice minutes. To a [...]