You're missing the "pain in my ass" side, which I think is the main reason for consumer unwillingness.
Even if I'd be willing to throw a few cents at a site for content, I don't want to log in to yet another service with yet another username and password to do so; I don't want to click through three pages to authorize a payment; I don't want to do much of anything apart from perhaps clicking "Yes." Most importantly, I don't want to have to create a new account with some random micropayment company that's probably going to be gone in a few months in order to endure any of the other annoyances listed above.
This is pretty much the only reason Apple is getting away with selling stuff on the iPhone - you have to be associated with an iTunes account to use the phone, and all you need to do is punch in your password when it comes time to purchase. Since the same amount of annoyance comes at you whether you download free or paid apps (a brilliant design decision, by the way - there's really no need for them to force you to put in your password to authorize a "purchase" of something that's free since they're not charging you anyways, but setting up that equivalence between free and paid apps is useful to them), you can actually decide between the two on the basis of price rather than annoyance.
Even if I'd be willing to throw a few cents at a site for content, I don't want to log in to yet another service with yet another username and password to do so; I don't want to click through three pages to authorize a payment; I don't want to do much of anything apart from perhaps clicking "Yes." Most importantly, I don't want to have to create a new account with some random micropayment company that's probably going to be gone in a few months in order to endure any of the other annoyances listed above.
This is pretty much the only reason Apple is getting away with selling stuff on the iPhone - you have to be associated with an iTunes account to use the phone, and all you need to do is punch in your password when it comes time to purchase. Since the same amount of annoyance comes at you whether you download free or paid apps (a brilliant design decision, by the way - there's really no need for them to force you to put in your password to authorize a "purchase" of something that's free since they're not charging you anyways, but setting up that equivalence between free and paid apps is useful to them), you can actually decide between the two on the basis of price rather than annoyance.