This is the fourth instalment of my predictions for big tech trends for 2011. You can read predictions 1, 2 and 3 respectively.
4. A Re-Focus on Non-Smartphones
Remember the days when you didn’t have a smartphone? I only switched over to an iPhone in Nov (let me add that this was after some cruel bullying by all the other geeks in Appleton Tower about how the screen on my Nokia N95 didn’t ‘work’ – peer pressure is harsh 
and I don’t think I could ever live without it. But sometimes it’s hard to remember that people with smartphones are the exception rather than the norm. According to a recent report published by Nielson (Jan 2011), just under 70% of the phones are non-smartphones – a statistic that is sometimes forgot when the discussions about iOS vs android (vs Web OS) are dragged up.
This really means there is a huge market out there for any startup that can make feature phone services. Hailed as the next big startup – GroupMe – is a service which allows people to set up little groups that they can text with a single number. These groups can be set up for an hour, a day or a week. It just makes communicating with a bunch of people fairly easy. One scenario would be being on a long weekend with a bunch of friends; you can set up a short number to allow people to communicate with each other when everyone is off doing their own thing.
I know that local mobile design company – Yiibu – is re-focusing on mobile web design. Bryan has an excellent presentation on this:
[slideshare id=5172436&doc=yiibu-rethinkingthemobileweb-100910074556-phpapp01]
The web isn’t just about smartphones and I think this year, with the upcoming success of GroupMe, we’ll see a bunch of new startups which will shun away from smartphones only and tap into the huge market of non-smartphones.
Weekly Events Menu: 14th-20th Sept
Hi Kate,
Been enjoying your predictions lately. Agree with the 70% figure but this stat needs to go hand in hand with the rate of smartphone penetration into the Market. The improvements in the network bandwidths and the desire to flood the Market with loads of new smart phones will ultimately bring the cost down and the costbto switchover will be negligible going forward.
What do you think?
Kapil
Thanks for posting, really enjoyed the article, very interesting. Its all about information on-demand. Social media is changing the way we live our lives; how we stay in contact with people, how we conduct business, where we get our news, what information we volunteer to give away to people and what we can share and influence. But if the 70% figure is accurate then there is a huge market out there. Will be interesting to see what happens in the next 12 months
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Your N95 will be included as a “smartphone” in that survey, I suspect. The N95′s Symbian OS usually counts as smartphone.
The smartest phone in the world with a flat battery is nowhere near as good as a dumb-phone with half a charge, in my experience. There are real advantages to having a phone that doesn’t do much but make calls and lasts a week on a single charge. But I should shut up, I work on smartphone technology.