Grown Up Thinking

 

Though the price of an average mobile phone call keeps dropping, as does the number of land lines, the phone industry has seen no shortage of income thanks to the purchasing ferocity of their youngest market segment .  A recent study released showed that by the age of 17 at least 91 percent of girls and 78 percent of boys own a mobile phone, the majority of which use it for more than just making and receiving phone calls.  Mobile providers are embracing teenagers in every possible way, through youth centric promotions, applications and model designs.   Like any brand, the goal is to win consumers early, and create an affinity that will continue on, even after their parents stop paying the bill.  They have done this by constantly adding or offering more to each device and mobile plan, placing a higher importance on features over functionality, quickly phasing out the traditional cell phone and cell user in the process.

While this mobile feature renaissance has made it easier to create and download your own phones content and applications it is also causing much worry among many analysts, lawmakers, and wireless industry experts.  The overwhelming amount of data now offered by cell phone providers has begun to reach a limit and added features will start to add a lot to cell phone bills, as much as $20 additionally each month.  More features and more data also means more congestion and most major cell phone carriers have begun putting bandwidth restrictions on all applications and capping once unlimited data plans for customers. 

Cameras, MP3 players and a video player are now standard in most phones not because the user needs them but because the provider needs more channels of revenue.  This is not necessarily a bad thing by any means but it does make me wonder what I’m giving up in order to have my cell phone function as an imaginary light saber.  It’s great that I can play every Super Nintendo game on my 3 inch screen but I still can’t figure out why I can’t get reception in the right corner of my apartment.  When did talking become the least practical use for a cell phone?

 

 

 

 

 

Tags: mobile, teens, youth marketing

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 10:38 am and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.