Is one cell phone enough?
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.
Then we asked why:
- 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