Smartphones Sales Finally Overtake Feature Phones: 10 Reasons Why

By Don Reisinger

If not for the iPhone, it’s entirely possible that the feature phones would still prevail as the best-selling class of mobile phones. But the Apple iPhone defined smartphone design when it hit the market in 2007. Since then mobile phone makers have rushed to try to match the iPhone for features and functionality.

Although some feature phones come with touch-screens these days, by and large, the best touch displays are found in smartphones. That makes sense. After all, smartphones cost more and deliver more features and applications. This means they also can deliver high profit margins. Naturally, device makers and mobile service providers are going to focus on products that deliver stronger margins. Customers have shown they are willing to pay extra for touch-screen functionality, and how can device maker resist that.

Android has been a huge change agent in most markets around the world. Google’s operating system has been leveraged by hundreds of vendors worldwide and has allowed for the rapid expansion of smartphone market share. Android might be even more important to smartphone growth than the iPhone.

Product design has been another major reason for the growth in smartphones. Over the last several years, smartphone makers have been delivering truly outstanding-looking products, and many consumers will jump at the chance to buy smartphones with the latest additions.

Quite a few companies that previously had bunches of success in the feature phone market are now devoting most of their resources to smartphones. Motorola and Nokia are perhaps two of the most obvious vendors in that category, but many more exist. Feature phones are simply becoming afterthoughts.

Although the BlackBerry was popular in the enterprise long before the iPhone or Android was available, the corporate world has truly ramped up its smartphone adoption worldwide. If not for the enterprise’s incessant need to improve productivity, feature phones wouldn’t be so far behind.

Carriers around the globe are embracing new wireless technologies at a rapid rate. Technologies such as 3G are ubiquitous, and 4G LTE is quickly being deployed across the world. Smartphones use those technologies to deliver Web service to device owners. Feature phones, meanwhile, do not. That’s a major contributing factor for the smartphone’s recent success.

It would be a poor decision on the part of anyone evaluating the smartphone market to not acknowledge that culture and a desire to be “cool” both play a role in the success of smartphones. Nowadays, a smartphone, such as the iPhone, is in the hands of passersby everywhere. What’s more, pop culture has evolved into a platform for technology industries to push smartphones as the must-have complements to any social event. Smartphones are, quite simply, cool. Feature phones? Not so much.

Samsung has found a way to appeal to both feature phone buyers and smartphone purchasers. This has enabled the company to create a massive market in which it “graduates” its customers from feature phones to smartphones. Considering Samsung is the world’s largest mobile device maker, that strategy has played an integral role in the success of smartphones.

Try going into a mobile service provider’s store and buying a feature phone these days. After about five minutes of searching for a feature phone, you’ll be inundated by recommendations from salespeople saying that getting into the smartphone craze is the right move. The carriers are going where the money is, and they want nothing more than to sell as many smartphones as possible.

Customers looking to get their hands on a smartphone don’t have to spend a lot of money. On the contrary, they can get their hands on a high-end device, like the iPhone 4, without putting any money up front for the hardware—as long as they can afford to pay for the two-year service contract that comes with it. Such deals effectively eliminates the price advantage feature phones once had and delivers an all-around better value proposition for smartphones. That makes customers who are on a budget jump at the chance to get into the smartphone market.