Greg Potter, In-Stat: 75% of Survey Respondents Include 4G as Ideal Phone Feature

October 25, 2011

The rapid adoption and growth of smartphones and of other mobile computing devices have pushed the expectation needle for the ideal feature set to new levels. As a result, most handsets today include a multitude of features like a digital camera, GPS, email capability, touchscreen, and speakerphone, among others. Recent In-Stat research provides some insight into what features are included in respondents’ ideal phone, and surprisingly, 75% of the surveyed respondents included 4G in that category.

“Although 4G is an important feature for handset buyers, there is a lot of confusion surrounding 4G,” says Greg Potter, Analyst. “When survey respondents were asked which carrier offered the fastest 4G speeds, the majority of the respondents either didn’t know or felt they were the same across carriers.”

Additional survey findings include:

• Consumers are becoming more entrenched in their choice of operating system, 36% will only consider one phone OS, compared with only 23% last year.
• Over 20% of T-Mobile users answering the survey said they were planning on switching carriers in the next 12 months.
• Over 40% of respondents have no interest at all in using an NFC payment system.
• The percentage of people willing or might be willing to pay for Bluetooth is declining, going from 45% in 2006 to 35% in 2011.