The survey conducted by BuzzCity, which describes itself as a provider of global wireless communities and consumer services, shows that a fifth of the survey respondents made purchases using their mobile phones and over a third liked implementing money transfers via their handset.

The most popular items with customers were books, downloads and virtual gifts as well as games, movies and music.

Purchasing movies and travel tickets was found to be popular with 12% of the users.

Responds confessed that in the future they would be happy to make other day-to-day transactions such as ordering groceries, and paying restaurant bills and parking fees via their mobiles.

Yet being fascinated by the variety of possibilities coming along with mobile commerce and mobile banking, customers in most cases are not very experienced in how to practise it.

"Consumers want to make payments with their mobiles but many are not yet aware that these services exist," said K F Lai, chief executive of BuzzCity.

Therefore, marketers are called upon to share more product-related information on the mobile internet.