The Ongoing Love Affair With Our Mobile Phones

The results from a very intriguingly-worded survey conducted by TeleNav reveal some very telling facts about Americans and what we’re willing to give up if forced to make a choice between our cell phone and…

To paraphrase the late, great Robert Palmer, “you might as well face it, you’re addicted to… your cell phone.” That’s the only conclusion I can come to after reviewing the findings from the aforementioned survey.

What TeleNav did was pose the following query to respondents:

Are you willing to give up your mobile phone for a week or…

• Alcohol
• Chocolate
• Caffeine
• Exercise
• Sex
• Toothbrush
• Shoes
• Computer

Care to guess which one of the above more people willing to give up instead of their phone?

Ok raise your hand if you said sex… I see you in the back, raise your hand. Oh by the way, of those who indicated they would be more willing to give up sex than their mobile phone for a week, 70% were women. You draw your own conclusions from that…

TeleNav also wanted to get a breakdown among the big three smartphone Operating Systems (OS) – iPhone, Android and Blackberry to gauge how their users feel about their phone/OS, how/where they use them, etc.

• Apparently Android user their phone and their style go more hand in hand than iPhone & Blackberry users
• Was surprised to see only 5% of Blackberry users use their phone for business
• And shame, shame on us iPhone users as we apparently check our phones at the dinner table more than our mobile brethren

Then there’s the matter of smartphone users vs. feature phone users.

Survey says…

• Smartphone users were twice as likely as feature phone users to give up hot showers rather than their phone for one week.
• 31% of smartphone users said they check their phone for messages or email while at the movies; only 7% of feature phones admitted to doing the same.
• Smartphone users were twice as likely as feature phone users to say they’d rather give up television for a week than their phone.

It’s quite obvious there’s either a love affair or an addiction, depending on how you look at it, that we have with our mobile/cell phones.

From a personal standpoint, it’s rather alarming to see people willing to give up so much just to keep their phone and I have to admit, I check my phone more than I should.

However from an advertising and marketing professional standpoint, it just speaks, no screams that there is a world of opportunity for mobile marketers and ALL marketers out there to get your message in front of a whole lot of people, to put it quite simplistically.

There are more interesting findings from the survey, which can be found here.

Steve Olenski

Originally posted on the Star Group blog