phonesAccording to a little piece of research, we might all have been wrong: it is not that owners of feature phones (the embellishing term for the “not so smart” phones) do not want content, they do, or at least “over” 90% of them do.

The report said they found “strong interest” in apps with VoIP, IM and navigation leading the pack. Now, is this Apple’s ads (“there’s an app for that”) having an impact? Or did these people want that stuff all along and just could not get it? To be clear: there have been VoIP solutions for a while (depending on the carrier of course: Vodafone and T-Mobile Germany weren’t too keen but 3 UK has a specific Skype phone out), there are dozens of mobile IM clients. And when it comes to maps, well, GPS beats triangulation any day and a lot of carriers have traditionally been, erm, cautious with allowing application providers to access network data.

It is striking that the most sought after apps are those that – anecdotally – a lot of smartphone owners use regularly, and also that most of these come for free (to the user). So is it the aspirational look at the guy with the posher phone who gets stuff for free? I wonder…