Back in 2011, smartphone sales finally overtook feature phones in the cellphone market in the United States. Now, it seems that this milestone has finally been achieved on a global level.
According to figures by Gartner.com, smartphone sales have grew 46.5 percent in the second quarter of 2013, where, out of a total 435 million mobile phones sold, about 225 million smartphones, were sold, whereas the sales of feature phones were limited to 210 million, declining 21 percent from last year. This milestone is a clear sign that the smartphone revolution has reached beyond the US and Europe, most prominently up to Latin America, and South Asia.
Of course, feature phones are still quite popular in developing countries, where having a cellphone is still more of a luxury than a mere commodity, and where battery life and network reliabilities are far more important to people than any other factors. But still, with low end smartphones running low-end OSes like the Bada OS for Samsung devices, Nokia's Asha series smartphones and even low-end Android handsets being unveiled in developing markets, it'll be interesting to see how feature phones will hold up against smartphones.
With the marginal line between the selling prices of feature phones and the selling prices of low-end smartphones shrinking rapidly, another question arises: Is it wiser to buy a low-end smartphone rather than a reasonably good feature phone?
Let's look at the side that answers to this question with a huge "YES!" first. Whenever you talk about a smartphone versus a regular run-of-the-mill cellphone, what is the biggest difference we will see? Undoubtedly it is going to be the sheer number of applications available on the smartphone. Want to get directions? There's an app for that. Want to know which peak that is on the horizon? There's an app for that. Want to ride a shark? There isn't an app for that right now, but there might even be one for that in the near future! This is one of the very defining features that most cellphone-turned-smartphone users tend to switch to a smartphone for. In all actuality, the whole difference between a smartphone and a feature phone is the framework it runs, and the range of applications provided on that very framework. And in this very department, smartphones take it away by a long, long mile.
But wait! We are talking about the low-end smartphones here! To be perfectly honest, the low-end smartphones running not-very-popular-OSes aren't any better than a regular feature phone!(As of now, of course.) Why so? you may ask. And I'll tell you why so. Right now, these not-very-popular OSes are in the just-developing phase of their lives. What does this mean? Why, this means a limited number of apps, and a limited number of handsets running this OS! And you wouldn't want to spend your hard-earned money on a "smartphone" which has even worse features and applications than a regular feature phone, would you?
Well, we've talked about the young, juvenile OSes, but what about a little better, more mature OSes? (Looking at you, Android.) To be fair, low-end devices don't really play along nicely with these mobile Operating Systems. Even on high end devices, we sometimes see a stutter here, some lag there. On low-end devices, these stutters become regular ordeals, and regular screen freezing and crashing, not to mention the limitation on the number of applications, thanks to the below-par mobile phone specifications, makes the whole journey a very bumpy ride. We would be better of using a smoothly-running feature phone rather than something like this.
When it comes down to it, smartphones and feature phones are after all, cellphones, and the whole idea of a cellphone is to provide us with communication, which both of these conflicting sides accomplish. It is just up to us to decide whether we want a bucket load of extra features with a price tag, or plain old communication on a budget.
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