Quick Messaging Phones Gain Favor Fast

While smartphones like Apple’s iPhone, the BlackBerry Storm, and T-Mobile’s Android-based MyTouch get all the attention, another category of mobile phones has quietly been accelerating its market share, says Forrester Research.

The quick messaging device offers a keyboard and, or touchscreen, providing much of the functionality of a smartphone but lacking the high-level operating system. Where a smartphone user likely is interested in email or mobile Web, a quick messaging user is text message centric.

At the start of 2008, seven percent of U.S. adult mobile subscribers owned a smartphone, while just one in 20 subscribers used a quick messaging device. A year later, more than one in 10 adult subscribers was using a smartphone, an impressive growth rate of 57 percent, but quick messaging devices grew nearly twice as fast and almost doubled their market share to nine percent.

In other words, quick messaging devices have nearly reached the level of smartphone penetration.

With all major operators expanding their quick messaging lineup and prices declining, these numbers are likely to continue in 2009, Forrester Research predicts.

For example, AT&T today offers more than 10 phones in this category, beginning at just $9.99
for the Motorola Karma when purchased online with a two-year contract. Verizon Wireless goes even further with the Samsung Intensity. Iit’s free with a two-year commitment, says Charles S. Golvin, Forrester Research analyst.

As you might guess, mobile subscribers ages 18 to 24 are nearly 50 percent more likely to own a quick messaging device than a smartphone.

Smartphones are most prevalent among subscribers ages 25 to 34, yet quick messaging devices are nearly as popular in this segment, and more than doubled their share in this group last year, says Golvin.

Quick messaging devices also appeal to a more mainstream audience. In terms of demographics and psychographics, quick messaging device users more closely resemble other mainstream mobile subscribers than do smartphone users.

While smartphone owners are overwhelmingly the male, well educated technology optimists that personify the early adopter, quick messaging device owners earn slightly less than the average subscriber and are more likely to be female.

More importantly for mobile operators, the quick messaging device owners spend a much higher percentage of their monthly income on mobile services than does the average subscriber.

Ttext messaging (SMS) is the driver. Some 70 percent of quick messaging device owners say they use SMS daily.

From a mobile operator's point of view, quick messaging customers are important because they are "mobile centric." Their traffic is much more likely to remain on the mobile network than to terminate on a landline and their communication is more likely to end up on another phone than on a PC.

More than 60 percent of quick messaging device owners use multimedia messaging (MMS), which most often exploits the phone’s camera and terminates on another mobile phone. For large operators like Verizon Wireless and AT&T in particular, this traffic is more likely to be “on-net,” which reduces their fees from interconnections with other operators.

Users with a quick messaging device are more likely to be primarily motivated by entertainment than the average mobile subscriber. Therefore, it’s no surprise that these subscribers are among the most avid purchasers of content for their mobile phone, says Golvin.

Nearly half of quick messaging device owners say they bought at least one form of content in the past six months, versus only one quarter of all subscribers.

"Heavy Texters" are a fast-growing mobile end user segment.