Telstra has revealed the addition of almost one million new mobile services in the six months to December 2011, but Sensis revenues plummeted 24 percent in 12 months.
"A growing data divide continues in cellular handsets," he added. "Those who see the value in wireless Internet access are justifying the investment, whereas voice-centric users have little incentive to upgrade, which is obviously detrimental to operators who seek to sell data plans and media access services to their subscribers."
That makes sense. Unless you're a fashion victim, if your need is for "just a phone" there's little need for frequent handset upgrades. The phone you've got is probably small enough, light enough and lasts long enough on one charge to keep you happy for a few years.
And the features people want are well established in existing models. According to NPD's survey, 43 percent wanted a camera and 36 percent wanted to be able to send and receive text messages. Nothing new there!
But when you look at the features of the phones that were sold, the big increase was in models with a QWERTY keyboard. While only 11 percent of handsets sold in 3Q07 had this feature, that grew strongly to 30 percent in 3Q08.
There were also distinct increases in the number of handsets sold with Bluetooth (up from 72 percent to 83 percent) and music players (from 49 percent to 68 percent).
The sales rankings are based on more than 150,000 completed online consumer research surveys each month, NPD officials explained. The sample is said to be "nationally balanced and demographically representative." Corporate purchases are not tracked.
The NPD figures come hot on the heels of a JD Power and Associates survey that found Apple was the smartphone vendor with the highest satisfaction among business users.
David Bass
| For the fourth year in a row, IDC has placed content security provider Websense (NASDAQ: WBSN) at the top of the IDC Worldwide Web Security 2011 –…
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