The United States always used to be the frontrunner in the Western world when it came to new technology, and its population embracing the technology. The idea of music on your mobile is a simple one, and one that many mobile networks have placed a lot of time, effort and funding into.

However it appears that US consumers aren’t so keen on mobile music, particularly when it comes to the cost involved with downloading the music to their phones from the providers.

A new study from Jupiter Research however says that even cost isn’t a factor to the resistance put up by consumers in the US.

Just 14% of people who took part in the research said they would buy MP3 music via their mobile phones, while just 28% claimed they would purchase ringtones. The rest said they had no intention in ever buying music via their mobile phones.

1/5 of all mobile phone handsets in the US have MP3 player capabilities, but the problem rests with the operators placing too expensive charges on the musical downloads.

The biggest issue seems to be that in the US the mobile handset tends to be the property of the network provider, whereas in Europe the consumers tend to own the handsets themselves. Therefore US mobile phone users are reluctant to purchase music for the mobile phones when they don’t actually ‘own’ the hardware themselves.