Smartphone sales double; are dumbphones getting the boot?
It is fairly plain to see that cell phones are, at this point, generally considered a necessary commodity for day-to-day living. What you might not know, however, is that it isn’t just any phones that are making their ways into consumer pockets as of late.
Engadget Mobile posted today that NPD released a survey evidencing that American consumers are not buying quite as many phone gadgets as they were a year ago (can anyone say recession?). Not a huge shocker there. Mobile handset sales are down 13% since last year, which is expected.
Apparently the cellular carriers and manufacturers alike aren’t hurting too badly though, because the price of the handsets that do manage to escape store shelves is significantly higher than last year. Why, you ask? Because consumers are rapidly adopting smartphones over their elder counterparts, those that have come to be known as “dumbphones.”
In fact, adoption of smartphones has been so high in the last year, sales of said devices has literally doubled. No doubt that is due to the fact that carriers are trying to push adoption of smartphones like Blackberrys, HTC handsets, Palm devices and iPhones so that consumers get on board the mobile data train. Still, that’s good news for those of us that are avid smartphone users.
The reason that should excite you is because the more folks pick up smart phones and data packages, the more carriers will have to compete to retain your business. Right now, data plans are a bit high in the price department; however, if a larger percentage of Americans are using data plans on different carriers, those carriers will have to prioritize pricing of data packages to stay ahead of the pack.
So get your Aunt Betty and Uncle Fred a Blackberry or HTC Dream for Christmas. Front some of their bill out of the kindness of your heart, and hopefully soon you’ll be seeing your own mobile bill lose a bit of weight.
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August 22nd, 2008
If you ask me Smartphone are bought by dumb people because the carriers are telling you that you have to get a data plan in order to buy this phone. More $ More $ More $. Does it ever end. What ever happened to just a phone that makes a call. The cell Phone companies have suckered us into getting services that we may not really need. But once you try it you can’t go back. Oh God I’ve been suckered and I can’t go back.