Mobile Phone Choices

Mobile phones are now created as social tools. Smartphones are especially good at being social, integrating text, voice, video and images in an endless number of apps that can serve a user’s needs, and all without the need for a web-based social network. Almost 750 million users out of a smartphone population of over billion are already using these apps.

If you are Google, Facebook or almost any other major provider of social communications platforms originally developed for the web, this move to mobile messaging represents a considerable challenge. Choices of mobile phones are changing every year. Most of the population own the smartphones which are latest and support social network better than others. We have previously experienced a shift from the second generation (2G) to the third generation (3G) mobile phones, which changed the way people use their mobile phones. The rise of the 3G network and its consumer acceptance is said to be one of the toughest marketing challenges in recent history (Benady, 2002).  Recent Consumer shift from 3G to 4G means that in order to be able to use the services offered by the faster network consumers need to acquire new mobile handsets equipped with more easy Internet access and new features such as possibility to have gesture recognition, event manager, wireless charging etc. However, at present the majority of new mobile phones purchased are low-cost handsets without the latest technological features.

Benady, D. (2002). As simple as one-two-3G. Marketing Week, 26-29.