Smartphones Used For Anything But Making Calls
The Telegraph reports that David Johnson, general manager of devices at O2 in the United Kingdom, considers the smartphone to have evolved into a digital “Swiss Army Knife”.
Statistics confirmed that making a phone call was only fifth in terms of time spent on the diverse functions available to smartphone users; browsing the web led the long list of daily activities.
Gadget Attrition
How many of us wake up to our iPhone alarm clock app? With batteries that generally need charging daily our bedside is a natural location for the cradle and it’s no stretch of the imagination to understand why we activate the alarm.
There is some evidence that younger users are even abandoning the wristwatch.
Nor is it rocket science to figure out that carrying a camera in addition to our smartphone has become the preserve of the man with too many pockets or the most avid of photographers. After all, the camera on my phone is now superior to the dedicated Samsung camera I purchased only three years ago.
The same logic and habit applies to your MP3 player; except that my wife still carries both. That is simply because the old iPod is buried at the bottom of her bottomless handbag.
Goodbye To The PC
Quite probably in the Tower, Monitor and Keyboard format with which we are familiar. Those may survive in some manner within the commercial environment, but domestic usage will most probably develop along a more ergonomically relaxed approach.
Currently that would be typing onto our touch screen Android tablet while viewing via the TV. The benefit being that the tablet can follow us to the bathroom or Starbucks as a stand-alone device.
Tablet or Smartphone?
With users placing such little importance on the verbal communication function; an estimated 12 minutes out of around two hours spent on our smartphones each day, the question becomes “does size matter”? With 25% of usage dedicated to surfing the Web I suggest that it does. A Tablet offers greater satisfaction.
However, both culture and gender enter into this mix. Females will modify their choice of handbags to accommodate an increasingly light tablet. Latin males will increasingly carry a “man bag”. North American males will refuse this convenience and continue their love affair with their iPhone and an overstuffed wallet in their back pocket.
Nor are all British males are dressed on Saville Row; sartorial suicide in the form of cargo pants could be the compromise that carries their Playbook.
Facebook Frenzy
Reports of an early death to the Facebook phenomena are ill founded and statistically it accounts for 17 minutes per day. E-mailing and texting, which increasingly converge with social networking, account for a an additional 23 minutes of our two hour smartphone obsession.
Leisure And Pleasure
Only 14 minutes a day dedicated to Games was surprising; my own kids seem to spend closer to 14 hours ignoring adults and education as they “improve their cognitive and multitasking skills”.
Film (and I assume this to include u-tube) was also modest and comparable to the reading of e-books.
Swiss Army Apps
It’s perverse that the quintessential neutral nation, whose only recognized army consist of a few dozen young men guarding the Pope, are lauded for the invention of a multi-functional tool that will be confiscated as a weapon by any airport security pit-bull.
However, the Swiss Army Smartphone analogy is a good one as the mobile phone has, in less than a decade, evolved into an ubiquitous, indispensible and multi-faceted communication, education and entertainment device.
In the US market, per capita mobile phone calls have become fewer each year since 2007; in fact since 2005 the average length of call has also halved. That is an interesting and unpredicted trend.