160 Characters posts the results of a survey that found just 17% of UK mobile phone owners use their devices for anything other than texting and calling — on a daily basis. Somehow that’s not as surprising as the headline made it out to be. In any case, the company behind the survey says “although the services may be clearly explained in accompanying manuals, users often do not understand the purpose of additional services and therefore do not feel any need to learn how to use them.”

Usability is a big problem, though I think they’re overstating the importance of the manual — does anybody read them anymore? The part to focus on there is “users often do not understand the purpose of additional services”. Part of that’s a marketing problem, where telecoms too often focus on marketing technologies rather than services, like MMS or WAP. But the real problem is that users aren’t being presented with a whole lot of data services and applications they find compelling. I’ll use of of Russell’s favorite examples here: video calling. Video calling’s failed to catch on, not because people don’t understand it, but because they’re not interested in it. And so it goes with many other services, particularly carrier-supported ones.

An operator should look at this figure and think, “gee, there’s a whole lot of room for growth there.” Then, they need to figure out how to make it happen — by creating a better ecosystem for developers and content providers.

As an aside, to lump daily SMS use in with calling masks its widespread use for data and services. Remember, it’s a platform, not just and application.