Cell Phones without Internet Access
Only 6.5% of respondents have never owned a cell phone (without Internet access), making it the third broadest ownership base behind only desktop computers and traditional TVs, according to a Researchscape survey of 1,000 consumers.
Purchase Interest
Despite the maturity of the category, it continues to generate interest: 17.6% of respondents were “very interested” or “extremely interested” in purchasing a feature phone. People interested in feature phones rather than smart phones have dramatically different interests in other consumer electronics. They are most likely to also be interested in digital cameras without video (0.323 correlation), digital photo frames (0.153 correlation) and TVs without Internet access (0.100 correlation). They are least likely to be interested in smart phones (cell phones with Internet access, at -0.474 correlation), smart TVs (televisions with Internet access, -0.184 correlation) and video game consoles (-0.161 correlation).
Feature phones are a category that doesn’t benefit much from substitution: only 3.1% of respondents would replace a broken device from a different category (typically, a cell phone with Internet access) with a feature phone. Here are some of the reasons why 2.5% of respondents will switch from smart phones to feature phones:
- Monthly plan costs are too expensive (6 respondents):
- “I do not use it enough to justify the price for it a month.”
- “My Internet plan is too expensive. I wanna get a simple cell phone for calling and texting.”
- “It costs me too much per month for a data plan.”
- Internet access from the phone is a luxury (3 respondents):
- “I have Internet at home, don’t really need it on my phone too.”
- “I don’t really *need* a cell phone with internet access, since I always have my lap top around me and Wi-Fi is pretty much available everywhere on my college campus.”
- “Prefer to use phone only for making and receiving calls.”
Only 0.8% of respondents without a feature phone said it was the device they didn’t own that they were most interested in purchasing. Of all respondents, just 0.5% identified feature phones as the device they were most interested in purchasing, the second lowest interest level.
Current Ownership
35.5% of respondents currently own a feature phone, the 9th highest ownership rate of the 16 devices studied.
13.8% no longer use the device, compared to an average of 16.3% across devices. Frequency of usage was also average: 59.5% of owners reported using their feature phone frequently, compared to smart phones, which were used frequently by 84.7% of owners (the highest usage rate).
In a separate survey of 400 consumers, we asked respondents a hypothetical question: which devices would they purchase if they had lost all of their devices in a robbery and new purchases were covered by insurance? 37.6% of current owners were “very interested” or “extremely interested” in repurchasing a feature phone, the 5th lowest interest level in repurchasing; 16.2% of owners said it was the device that they were least interested in replacing if it broke.
Past Ownership
58% of respondents have owned a feature phone in the past but no longer do so, the highest rate of past ownership. This represents 62.1% of the group of current and former owners–in other words, more people owned a feature phone in the past than do so now. Unsurprisingly, almost all past owners of feature phones, 95% of them, now own a smart phone (cell phone with Internet access).