I’ve been recently ranting a lot on how users want more simpler phones; or more precisely phones that provide better interfaces to access the basic functionalities. Recent study study by J.D.Power & Associates has done a nice job on evaluating US mobile users and their usage of mobiles. The study is very extensive, but below are the main issues:

• The average handset price has dropped to us$86.
  This simply tells that most people don’t want to spend money to high-tech phones.
• The average life span of mobile handset is now 17.6 months (used to be 18 months).
  This is an growing enviromental issue. Especially combined with low prices, it shows that so called neo-green thinking (buy quality gadgets that last longer) has not yet made a breaktrough in mobile markets.
• Clamshell design has taken over
  In 2005 the clamshell design had 7% of markets, now it’s way over 50% and rising.

Even more interesting is what features users use in their mobiles :

• the speakerphone (26%)
• send/receive short messaging services [SMS] (22%)
• camera capabilities (19%)
• gaming (16%)

Tough the percentages seem small, they still present the millions of consumers who make the mobile content & services markets. However, as the results shows there is room for 3-5x growth IF people learn to use the features in their mobiles. And the key to this of course are better interfaces to the these features.

Read more about the study results.