Mobiles Overfeatured

There is a joke in engineering that goes like this: some people think the glass is half empty, some people think the glass is half full, engineers think the glass is too big. And so it is with mobile phones. They have too many features.

“Only 20% of mobile phone users prefer to use their phones as an all-in-one multimedia device for music, videos, Web surfing, and other activities beyond making phone calls,” the research firm said today.

Customers of T-Mobile are mostly likely to use advanced features, followed by customers of Sprint, and trailed by customers of AT&T. “Verizon Wireless customers are least likely to embrace their phone as an all-in-one multimedia device,” NPD said, despite that company often being cited for having the industry’s best customer service and widest coverage.

Verizon, as of Friday this week, will officially be the nation’s largest mobile phone company.

"Carriers and other handset retailers have an opportunity to educate customers as to the capabilities of their handsets in the wake of slower overall handset sales," analyst Ross Rubin explained.

Of the customers who do want more features than just simple telephony, the most requested option is a cameraphone, followed by text messaging, Rubin said in another recent study.

Of course text messaging is over priced. Some one could enlarge that market if the texts were charged by the connection and by the minute instead of by the message. It is only a matter of time.