Survey Says Text Messaging Most Important for Cell Phone Buyers
July 2nd, 2008 (1:00pm) Dominic Rivera 3 CommentsTweet This
Gone are the days when the cell phone is simply for talking.
In a survey commissioned by Access Systems Americas and conducted by Amplitude Research, buyers of new cell phones look at video capability (33%), music (34%), accessing the Internet (61%), email capabilities (63%), camera (67%), and text messaging (73%) as the most important features that they look for.
Other notable findings of the survey are:
- 62 percent said they would use Bluetooth while 51 percent will use the hands-free microphone to comply with restrictions when driving
- 39 percent said they have added new applications to their cell phones.
- 41 percent said they send or check emails one to five times a day while 28 percent said they do not use their cell phones for email
- 40 percent said they use their cell phones for traffic, weather, and stock market alerts
- 30 percent said they use their cell phones for banking transactions
What is important though is that 88 percent said that it is very important to have a cell phone to use in case of emergency.
I have to admit that I am not too familiar with my cell phone’s functions. I use it simply to call and send text messages. Of course, this was until yesterday when I received a note from T-Mobile informing me that text messaging rate will increase from $0.15 cents to $0.20 cents effective August 29, 2008.
What features of your cell phone are most important for you?
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The cost of the plan is the most important, and understanding the limitations of it. It’s also useful to have a phone with known hacks that let you get out of using the carrier’s Internet service and using something else. I make sure to have the unlimited texting plan – my 2 teenage daughters send more texts a day than I do in a month.
I recently had some fun when getting my company to order a new phone. So very hard explaining that I want three features and three features only:
Calling (very important)
Bluetooth (its hard to troubleshoot computers while holding a phone in one hand)
Texting (boss insisted)
Keeping all the features I’ll never use out means that my phone lasts an average of 4 days on one charge.
I also like to have a full keyboard for faster web and calendaring usage. It all makes no difference if you can’t make a call or it drops in the middle of the sentence. Which happens a lot, but it’s not the phone’s but rather the network issue anyway…