Personalization and the Swelling Mobile Market

Mike Greenberg
Reporter
08-08-2004

Dozens of new mobile technologies have made their debut this year, such as the newest "cell phone" with a hidden keyboard inside. This new gadget, made by Nokia, has many of the capabilities of a PC and has a similar retail price of $800.00. Whether a $20.00 pager or an $800.00 cell phone, mobile users are steadily growing in the U.S. and abroad with the U.S. lagging behind all other industrialized nations.

37 percent of today's American teenagers have cell phones and 22 percent of them said they planned to purchase one in the next year, reported Teenage Research Unlimited's study of 2,000 teenagers. This figure, seeming high, is the lowest of the world's industrialized nations. In Finland, for example, more than 90 percent of teenagers and preteens have cell phones - some as young as 4. The sale of PDA's and cell phones are not the only major income generators for wireless companies. In fact, Europeans spent over 500 million dollars (American) last year on mobile phone content, including ring tones, logos, football scores and other vital daily necessities. That's more than twice what they paid for PC-based content, according to the research company, Jupiter MMXI. This gap between PC content sales and mobile phone content sales will increase geometrically in the next three years. As more people adopt this fast paced mobile lifestyle, a growing need for personalization will develop. Personalization of design, function, and interface will be a common expectation. Beyond the ability to change mobile phone faceplates, consumers will expect their wireless devices to be a personal accessory that reflects their tastes and identity. "Ring tones answer the need people have to differentiate themselves," said Fabrice Grinda, founder and CEO of Zingy, "You want your phone to be more like you, and most of us just want to be considered cool." Consumers will become part of a mobile community, apart from the current Internet communities. Customized ringtones are rapidly spreading now and will be the norm in society by 2005. People will conscious of the image they are conveying through their mobile devices and accessories.

The world of communication is no longer what we knew of it with the original shoe-sized cell phones. Pocket PCs, PDA's, and multiuse cell phones are becoming the norm of society and will continue to grow into the 21st century. Our lives, in a sense, will become a device in the palm of our hands.