EMBARGOED UNTIL 00:01 FRIDAY 28th MARCH 2008
EMBARGOED UNTIL 00:01 FRIDAY 28th MARCH 2008
28th March 2008
– Losing your mobile could mean losing out on love according to research from O2 to mark the launch of its Bluebook service. The study reveals that up to 4.92 million Brits feel they may have lost the love of their lives thanks to losing their mobile. 1 in 5 people surveyed admitted to having ‘lost the perfect love’ because they failed to back up the contacts on their phone.
With two thirds (68%) of those questioned not backing up the contents of their mobile phone, it’s not surprising that losing it can also mean losing friends, treasured photographs and paid-for music downloads. 44% had permanently lost contact with friends, 40% lost memorable photographs, whilst one in ten lost downloaded music as a result of losing their mobile.
Flushing True Love Down the Toilet
O2’s research revealed that one in three people have lost at least one mobile phone in their lifetime, sometimes in fairly unusual ways:
- 19% of mobiles are left on the back of the bus
- 14% of people have had one too many beers and left their mobile in the pub
- Just over one in ten (12%) Brits even admit to dropping their mobile in the toilet, effectively flushing true love down the drain
- 4% claim to have destroyed their mobile by putting it in the washing machine
- One respondent even lost their mobile going loop-the-loop on a Rollercoster!
Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining
Whilst Brits dread losing their soul mate, a quarter (23%) look on the bright side when they lose their mobile, admitting to being happy to rid themselves of some people they didn’t like in the first place.
You Really Got a Hold on me
To help you try to make sure you never let a budding romance slip through your fingers, O2 has launched Bluebook – a free service which allows O2 customers to store address book contacts and automatically save texts and picture messages securely on a personal online portal.
Sally Cowdry, Head of Marketing, O2 UK comments, “People need to stop and think about the value of the information held on their mobile phones and back it up. Losing your mobile isn’t just an inconvenience, it could mean losing contact with friends, losing sentimental photos and, as this study shows, missing out on love. We created Bluebook to make it as easy as possible for our customers to back up and store the things that they value on their mobiles.”
ENDS
The research for O2 was carried out by Tickbox in March 2008 amongst a nationally representative sample of 1,009 UK adults aged 16 – 44.
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