Abstract:

Mobile data services have emerged as the widely used services of mobile phone in recent years, with the declining growth in voice revenue due to market saturation in mobile phone sector. As in Malaysia, the urban population, specifically in Kuala Lumpur area, are the first ones that will be using the new technology and become the trendsetters. This paper attempts to identify the factors that will influence the intention to use mobile data services by the urban population in Malaysia. The emphasis will be on the demographic profiles of the urban population to use the mobile data services. A questionnaire survey was conducted in the Klang Valley, Malaysia where Kuala Lumpur is located. Klang Valley is also the location where about a third of the Malaysian mobile phone subscribers live. The samples used are mainly the working population and graduate students. The survey was conducted in 2008 with 404 valid respondents. The findings from this study reveal that Perceived Usefulness, Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Enjoyment, Social Influence and Perceived Mobility have significant positive influence on the respondents' intention for mobile data services. However, Media Influence and Perceived Monetary Value were found to have no significant impact on respondents’ intention to use the services. Perceived Usefulness is the most significant factors in influencing the respondents’ usage intention for mobile data services, followed by Perceived Enjoyment, Perceived Mobility, Social Influence and lastly Perceived Ease of Use.The result from this study on technology adoption provides product developers and marketers with insights understanding of consumers’ behavioral intention to use the new emerging services that might replace the importance of voice data in the near future.