Years ago, we were completely happy with featured phones. Aside from sending SMS and making calls, feature phones let us tinker with Java games and other third-party applications. The mobile industry has shifted to smartphones now. In a recent study, more than half of US cellphone owners have one.
The study was conducted by Pew Internet and results show more than 53 percent of American adults have smartphones. When we break down the numbers, only 49 percent of all surveyed Americans aged 18 above actually had smartphones. 6 percent of the surveyed population said they didn’t have a phone and the remaining 45 percent still used feature phones. Out of these actual numbers, Pew Internet concluded that 53 percent of phone owners had smartphones while 47 percent had feature phones.
Most American smartphone owners are male but women took the bigger leap with a 13 percent increase in smartphone ownership. When we look at age groups, young adults aged 18 to 24 had an 18 percent increase in smartphone ownership in less than a year. What came as a surprise was that most smartphone adopters have an annual income of less than $30,000. The increasing number of low-end and mid-range smartphones running Android and Windows Phone most likely accounts for these numbers.
Who knows how far smartphones will go? Cheap but functional smartphones like Nokia Lumia 610 and Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G are continuously pushed out by handset makers. And with Verizon’s upcoming shared data plans, it’s only reasonable to think that more Americans will grab a smartphone in the coming months. Question is, are the glory days of feature phones coming to an end?
