For all the buzz around smartphones like the iPhone, BlackBerry and Droid, it is easy to overlook the fact that most consumers still use limited-function - or "feature" phones, as the industry likes to call them. According to data from the Nielsen Company, roughly 82% of cell phones fall in this category. (via the New York Times).
Apps have largely bypassed these consumers until recently. That is changing, however, as the phones themselves are becoming more sophisticated and new tools are coming to market to help app developers migrate their products to these devices.
Sophisticated OS, Bigger Screens
"Feature phones are migrating away from the tiny screens that characterized their dominance in the era of the Motorola Razr," said Ross Rubin, an industry analyst with the NPD Group, a market research company. (via the Times). "They have more sophisticated operating systems, touch screens and bigger screens." The LG Vu has a three-inch touch screen, a 2-megapixel camera and up to 4 gigabytes of external memory that can handle hundreds of additional applications. The Motorola Clutch has a web browser, support for GPS functions and is Bluetooth enabled.
Game Centric
If new statistics provided by Mplayit are a guide, of the apps available to them feature phone owners gravitate to games first. A mobile app store on Facebook that features apps from all three major smartphone marketplaces, Mplayit reports that iPhone owners tended to pass along to friends apps that manage stress during the holidays or entertain themselves or children. BlackBerry users were more focused on sharing apps for work or travel while Android users like to shop: three barcode reading apps landed in a list of the 10 most shared apps for the platform.
On the mass market feature phones powered by Java, it was games. The top five shared apps for mobile java, it found were Cafe Solitaire, Tiger Woods 2009, Sonic Jump 2, Deal or No Deal and The Sims 3.
Expanding Choices
Feature phone users' repertoire of apps should move beyond games, though, as tools brought to market over the last several months take hold in the developer market.
Last year Microsoft launched OneApp, a software application that allows feature phones to run popular mobile phone applications such as Facebook, Twitter, Windows Live Messenger and Mobile Wallet, with launch partner Blue Label Telecoms of South Africa.
Last September Verizon Wireless rolled out Tweet-Tweet, a Twitter-based application that allows users to keep up with Twitter using Verizon Wireless feature phones.
AT&T Interactive, for its part, is also focusing on this mobile phone constituency - and the advertisers that want to reach them. "Reaching 'on the go' mobile consumers is a rapidly emerging advertising opportunity - across both smart and feature phones," said Matt Crowley, chief marketing officer, AT&T Interactive. "Our approach is to play across the mobile ecosystem by developing mobile web and app experiences optimized across diverse devices, platforms and carriers."
"By doing so, we are able to meet mobile consumer needs, expand our reach - and integrate advertising that not only put advertisers in the spotlight, but provide value to the user."
AT&T Interactive's acquisition and integration of Plusmo and its mobile platform, is unifying development across all platforms including feature phones, he says.
