Story 7

Story 7
By Kevin Pabst
There isn’t any one thing from the past that is similar to the cell phone; a feat of technology that people were slow to adopt, but eventually a majority of people own it. Going way back, the closest comparison is the television. In the early days of television it was an expensive luxury that few had. These days though a television is one of the basic appliances that almost all homes have. The cell phone has become a basic accessory that a majority of people have, like a wallet.

The first question was if the survey taker had a phone, and every respondent said yes. As for future phone purchases 41 percent said they plan to buy a new phone in the next year, of which 58 percent intends to buy a smart phone. A smart phone was described as having advanced functions, like those of the Blackberry or an iPhone, features beyond basic media playback, texting (text messaging), and being a phone.

Every person that responded said they have a phone, but what are these people doing with them? Judging from the results it doesn’t look like they’re texting. Nearly 70 percent of people said they send, on an average day, one to 25 texts, and 17 percent of people send 26 to 50 texts. With the number of people intending to buy advanced phones it’s difficult to tell what they want to do. Apple’s iPhone has millions of applications that make the device modular, so it can do everything from e-mailing to playing games to browse the web. It’s likely that this kind of modularity is what users want, and not a specific feature.

It should be noted that the average age of people responding is around 21, maybe a little old for the compulsive texting of high school. From that perspective, it shows that as people grow older they tend to text much less than when they’re younger.

What can be drawn from all of this? Many people have cell phones, less and less of them use one of the basic functions, and a significant number of people want their phone to be more than a phone.