Is one cell phone enough?
December 6, 2007 | 8 Comments
PDAs are all but extinct, low-end digital cameras are dying off, and mp3 players and even watches are threatened. A lot of people in our industry predicted it; many consumers prefer to carry a ‘Swiss Army’ cell phone instead.
So why are so many people carrying two cell phones?
A new survey by In-Stat reports that about one quarter of the “career age” (age 30-65) cell phone users in the US carry more than one handset, and that this number has grown by over 40% in the past year. That’s more than 20 million people.
Skydeck can confirm this. We asked 1,000 cell phone subscribers* over the age of 18 how many phones they carry, and 14% said two or more. That means 30 million Americans have at least two cell phones.
- Splitting things up: Well over half carry an extra phone to split their work and personal lives, while sixteen percent use them to separate other types of calls.
- One size doesn’t fit all: 18% carry a smaller phone from time to time and 10% have different phones to match their fashion.
- Can you hear me now: 16% have phones with different carriers, so that they can get a signal more often.
- A purpose driven phone: 9% use one phone for voice and a different phone for email and Internet access.
(Other reasons include “one is my alarm clock”, “I like to keep one handy, to give to someone else”, and “the cheaper phone is for [swimming] pools.”)
The answers mean that most of these people have two lines, not just two phones sharing one SIM card. That has big implications for estimates of US cell phone penetration. Currently, the CTIA reports that there are over 243 million cell phone subscribers in the USA, which equals 80% of the total US population. But if most of the 30 million people with two or more phones have two or more subscriptions, the CTIA is counting them twice. If they all do, actual penetration is only 70%. Since the CTIA numbers include data cards for laptops and machine-to-machine subscriptions, and some people think that the number of prepaid subscribers is overstated, actual penetration is lower still.
There are millions of people in the US who still don’t have a cell phone, and millions more who may buy two.
* Our study was conducted in October 2007 over the Internet. The base was 1,000 US adult cell phone subscribers. Why didn’t we just ask how many people have a cell phone? We did, but the results are not reliable, because people who don’t have a cell phone may not have Internet access either. Yes, we eliminated those people who said that they had two phones because there are two lines on their family plan.
Image (c) iStockphoto/Zhenikeyev
Posted by: Dan
Categories: Mobile Market, Phones, Featured
8 Responses to “Is one cell phone enough?”
David J on December 7th, 2007 8:47 am
I wonder if those people carrying two phones for work vs personal would prefer to have a single physical phone that has two lines?
I mean, could you imagine needing two computers because you wanted to have two email addresses?
Owen Rooney on December 7th, 2007 11:33 am
We have the same situation here in Europe. Often employees have a Pre-pay phone for personal use and a contract phone for business or people use their business phone for personal calls (sometimes up to 40%)
We are have developed an app that resides on the handset which the user can tag the call as personal or business. It shall only present the calls that have not previously been tagged.
Employees like it as they can have the freedom to use 1 handset for all usage and they can avail of much better tarriffs. Employers like it as they can control usage and are fully Tax compliant as the mobile phone is increasingly seen as a “benefit in kind” by our Tax authorities.
Samuel A. Falvo II on December 7th, 2007 11:57 am
@David J:
IRS tax laws stipulate that you must account for your personal-vs-business property when filing for taxes. Using your phone for both personal and business uses (regardless of how many lines it supports) could complicate matters (one month, it could be used for 75% personal, the next only 25%). Having two phones makes tax reporting that much easier.
etesh mangray on December 7th, 2007 12:24 pm
great research jason.
David J on December 8th, 2007 10:23 am
@Samuel A. Falvo II: fair enough about the phone itself, but if you get a separate bill for each line then I expect that you could treat your business phone bill as a business expense.
Dennis Blank on January 2nd, 2008 3:43 pm
I carry a Blackberry for phone and email while working and have a second line and small cell phone for off-hours. it is more convenience to carry and doesn’t require repeated entry of an security code, required by my employer to protect the corporate web site.
Dean Bubley on January 31st, 2008 12:31 pm
This all comes down to individual choice. In the UK, there’s about 1.6 active SIMs per user, and many people have 2 or 3 devices.
http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/2008/01/mobile-vs-fixed-internet-users-2-its.html
I often meet people from the mobile industry who say “surely everyone would prefer a single device if they could have multiple numbers / all the features / work & personal ‘personalities’ etc.
Yes, some would. But plenty of others actively want two devices and two (or more) numbers. Even leaving aside the idea that you want one device with a Qwerty for work email, and another with a 5MP camera that looks cool, and a 3G USB modem for your laptop, there’s plenty of other reasons to have 2+ phones as highlighted in this article.
A classic case I see here in the UK is teenagers who get given a phone by their parents…. but also get a cheap phone of their own on prepay to contact their friends, share content, send SMSs to their boyfriends/girlfriends and so on, without risking their parents being able to intercept it or cap their usage.
Dean Bubley on January 31st, 2008 12:32 pm
Sorry, wrong link in my previous comment, should have been:
http://disruptivewireless.blogspot.com/2007/09/multiplicity-in-action-16-phones-per.html