Everyone’s favourite fashion accessory maker Krusell has published its top 10 list of mobile phones assessed by counting the number of pouches for various handsets again. So without any further ado, here’s the list:
1.(1) Apple iPhone 3G
2.(6) HTC HD 2
3.(4) Nokia E52
4.(2) Nokia 3720
5.(10) Nokia 6700 Classic
6.(5) Nokia 5800
7.(3) Nokia 6303 Classic
8.(-) Nokia X6
9.(9) Samsung B2100
10.(5) Nokia E72
() = Last month’s position.
It is as always: You tell me if this is representative (I would tell you it is not). But since hard numbers are so hard to come by, I thought I’d publish the soft (pouchy) ones instead. So there you go…
Here’s our monthly update on the best-selling phones as derived from accessory sales by Swedish company Krusell. They seem to be having a new product line: the iPhone shows up now (and as a “new entry” no less). It is arguably to show the limited value of this table in terms of overall sales.
It is noteworthy that June’s #1 phone (Nokia 6300) is a handset that was introduced to the market more than 2 years ago. Now it is a very solid performer (as my wife will tell you) and has been used as a very good-value phone (£0.00 when bought on a pay-as-you-go) by a lot of carrier. Or is it that the phone is now so shabby it needs to be covered by a plush holster? :p
I thought it is also noteworthy that Nokia’s new flagship the N97 (or any other N-series Nokia) is not featuring at all… It might be early days for the N97 but the others?
Well, make of it what you will, here’s the top 10 list (oh, wait, it’s a top 11 this month; woah):
1. (3) Nokia 6300
2. (-) Apple iphone 3G
3. (-) HTC Touch Diamond 2
4. (2) Nokia 3109
5. (-) Nokia E51
6. (1) Nokia 5800
7. (5) Nokia E71
8. (6) HTC Touch HD
9. (-) HTC Magic
10. (-)HTC Touch Pro2
11. (4) Samsung SGH-i900/i910 Omnia
() = Last month’s position.
According 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…
Our beloved manufacturer of carrying cases for portable electronics, Krusell, enlightens us again with their top 10 list of best-selling phones for the month of January 2009 (or should that be best-selling phone holsters?).
There is this Swedish maker of phone pouches and accessories, Krusell, and they deduce from the number of model-specific pouches (or cases) ordered from them the top-selling handsets each year. And the winner is the iPhone. Or is it only that iPhone users buy more pouches than others in order to protect their shiny toy? We don’t know.
2. (-) Nokia 3109
3. (2) Nokia 6300
4. (-) Nokia E51
5. (-) HTC Diamond
6. (-) Nokia N95 8GB
7. (-) Sony Ericsson K800i
8. (-) Sony Ericsson C702
9. (-) Sony Ericsson K850i
10. (-) Sony Ericsson K530i
() = last year’s position.
Motorola has recently been struggling a little to get the Koolaid out; it wasn’t often the pinnacle of cool recently. However, today they unveiled a new phone, the “W233 Renew” (catchy name, huh?), and that phone is made of recycled plastic bottles. Now people might jump to the fineprint to see what the percentage of re-used components is, etc but, hey, let’s just acknowledge that the concept is pretty cool, don’t you think?
“When designing the packaging, Motorola was able to reduce its size by 22 percent and the box and all of the materials inside are printed on 100 percent post-consumer recycled paper.”
According to research firm Nielsen (whose mobile arm incorporates what was previously known as Telephia), more than 20m household in the US (0r 17%) have ditched landlines in favour of mobile (or as they would call it cell) phones. It signifies a rather steep increase.
- U.S. cord cutters tend to have lower income-levels—59 percent have household incomes of $40,000 or less.
Smaller households, with just one or two residents, are more likely to cut the cord than larger households.
- Moving or changing jobs are the biggest life events associated with cord cutting: 31 percent of cord cutters moved prior to cord cutting and 22 percent changed jobs.
- Wireless substitutors tend to use their mobile phones more than their landline peers, 45 percent more per phone, but still save an average $33 per month in a household of one subscriber, less $6.69 for each additional wireless resident, when they cut the cord.
Now, what I do find surprising is not the fact but rather the apparent reasons given for “wireless substitution”. It is cost…On data, Nielsen also speculates:
“Landline wireless substitution may just be the start. [...] As wireless data networks improve and speeds become more and more competitive with broadband, some consumers may cut the Internet cord, as well, favoring wireless data cards and other access through carrier networks.”Now this I understand, and the study shows indeed that wireless-only consumers use the mobile Internet more than twice as often as their primary access to the web than the good old-fashioned rest (11% vs 5%). It will be interesting to see how quick this substitution works though for the masses: people with money tend to retain their landlines, which suggests that a wireless-only solution is still less convenient. With hardware (computers, phones, etc) becoming increasingly able to access multiple wireless standards (i.e. via the mobile networks as well as WiFi, etc), this factor might however be evaporating relatively quickly.
Norwegian incumbent Telenor has undertaken a survey, which found that 88% of all Norwegian 10-year-olds own a mobile phone, up 36% from 4 years ago. 9-year-olds are at 71% up from 57% last year. 60% of the kids teach their parents on how to use the thing… The leading “subjects” that are “taught” are camera, downloading music, SMS, Internet, MMS, video and radio.
Heavy users then… The whole concept of digital natives (vs. immigrants like me) may stand to be corrected (after a mere 5 years): are we now talking of mobile natives? Whilst in the good old days of 2001 Prensky (the inventor of the digital natives concept) mused that children, at the age of 15, would only have spent about 5,000 hours of reading vs. 10,000 hours of having played video games plus 20,000 hours of TV, this seems to shift, and not only in Norway: e.g. does my son (12, no 12 1/2 [!], with his own phone since he turned 11) check his e-mail only once every blue moon (it’s so yesterday!), the most important pieces of communication are IM and his phone. He has a Facebook account (even asked me if I would allow him to cheat on his age – you have got to be 13 to sign up), which he rarely uses though (this will change, I’m sure. He is utterly annoyed that I would not buy him an iPhone — because then he could IM and use FB and others on the move, too. Note to self: why are dads so stubborn, backward and generally obnoxious?). He is not really that interested in the XBox360 that was — rather cunningly — given to his dad as a Christmas present last year so as to be better able to regulate usage. Take away his phone though? Oooh.
Besides causing all sorts of concerns as to costs, imaging (could they actually look at “dirty” things earlier? well, according to that survey, 80% of all phones are registered by a parent, which means that they probably would pass through age-restriction-barriers; not my son though: his nasty dad signed him up to a no-data plan…) the much more interesting thing appears to be the actual shift in the ways how youngsters communicate and consume and compute information: communication via mobile (or IM for that matter) is normally limited to a radically reduced amount of information being shot back and forth in incredible intervals (I actually struggle to read my son’s IM conversations with his friends: “hi m8, let’s mt @4 in S park, s8ing should be cool td”). So arguably the information they consume is received (and presumably processed) in smaller chunks compared to previous generations. The Guardian (or, in the US: the NY Times) anyone?
Will this also extend to the way the next wave of savvy users will consume mobile content? Will that mean that they’re less inclined to play 18 levels of Call of Duty because it is too linear in gameplay? May, in a few years time, that (and not the 39-year-old mums) be the reason why quick and easy games may be more successful on mobile (as they are – probably for different reasons – today)?
Prensky concluded that his students’ brains had physically changed. What he meant is that children who grew up with digital media (I was a front-runner of my generation having played with my dad’s punchcards) compute information differently to people who grew up in an analogue world. After a mere 6 years, this seems to have shifted again, this time involving the constraints of the mobile screen but adding several layers that are inherent to that medium: location-sensitive, instant, anytime. Ah, what interesting times!
OK, but now back to Telenor’s survey. Interestingly perhaps, it also shows that attitudes as to when children should have a mobile have changed considerably. The threshold for mobile phones is now 10 years of age, and the percentage of parents who think it is acceptable for their children to have a mobile, more than doubled from 9 to 10 (22% for the younger ones to 56% for 10-year-olds). Is this related to the entry into secondary schooling (it was for us)? In 2002, only 11% of parents thought it were acceptable to give a 10 year old a mobile.
Interestingly, parents seem to give their children mobile phones before the parents actually think they should have any (are Norwegian schizophrenic???): 93% of 11-year-olds have a mobile, only 63% of parents say they actually want them to have one at that age. So who on earth gives them these things???
Disclaimer: I have exaggerated slightly for good effect. My dear first-born also reads 400-page novels and engages in discussions happily. He regularly reads the Guardian and German mag, Der Spiegel, etc, etc… Not all is lost then… 
I had to clarify that as he would otherwise probably get back to me soon, telling me how single-tracked and utterly analogue I was in my thinking…
This is adequate for the more thoughtful pre-Christmas period where everyone reflects a bit more and focuses on culture a bit more: mobile phones have finally gone beyond the meagre mainstream, knocked on the doors of this most high-brow piece of (dare I say it) entertainment and gained access to the cast list of a Wagner opera no less!
It might only be a little sideline but here it is: a Samsung G800 is featuring in the latest iteration of the children’s version of Wagner’s “Nibelungenring” at the Vienna State Opera. The “world” premiere (is Vienna not part of it?) will be in Tokyo.
The SGH-G800 is a leading member of the cast, it is reported: it fulfills not only one but several roles in the play, the most important one being taking a picture of the sleeping Bruennhilde; “it” then shows the picture to Siegfried and is therefore essential for the progression of the story…
And for the cultural barbarians amongst us here’s the explanation of the director, Matthias von Stegmann: “This independent play is meant to spark children’s interest for Wagner’s world. With Samsung’s unique camera phone we’re able to give a mobile phone an active role in an opera for the first time and thus create a link from virtual mythology to today’s reality.”
Samsung of course worked “in cooperation” with the Vienna State Opera on this and is understandably proud of its achievement.
So keep your eyes open! The first to spot one in Bayreuth, perhaps even in the hands of Wagner descendant Nike will win a price…
