Feature phone

A feature phone

A feature phone is a mobile phone which is priced at the mid-range in a wireless provider's hardware lineup. A feature phone has additional functions over and above a basic mobile phone or "dumb phone" which is only capable of voice calling and text messaging. However a feature phone may not be considered a smartphone, due to a lack of more advanced attributes. It is intended for customers who want a moderately priced and multipurpose phone without the expense of a high-end smartphone.

Feature phones may often be marketed by certain carriers under various terms; Rogers Wireless labels them as "smartphone lite"[5] while Bell Mobility uses the term "smartphone" for comparable devices (while using "superphone" to market high-end devices that other carriers regard as smartphone).

Market share

In 2011, feature phones accounted for 60 percent of the mobile telephones in the United States and 70 percent of mobile phones sold worldwide. By 2013, it is predicted that feature phones' share will drop at the expense of smartphones, as half of all mobile phones will be smartphones.

The reason for the shift is because smartphones are much more lucrative for manufacturers and carriers than feature phones. For instance Apple Inc.'s operating margins from the iPhone remain high since these devices have always been sold to carriers at a high enough cost which compels carriers to sell them as smartphones via retail.[6] It has also been found that attempting to keep manufacturing prices of feature phones low results in significant sacrifices to performance and usability (the latest OS is often too intensive for cheaper past-generation phone CPUs, such as Android 4.0 on the LG Optimus L7).[7][8]

During the mid-2000s, best-selling feature phones such as the fashionable flip-phone Motorola Razr, multimedia Sony Ericsson W580i, and the LG Black Label Series, not only occupied the mid-range pricing in a wireless provider's lineup, they made up the bulk of retail sales as smartphones from BlackBerry and Palm were still considered a niche category for business use. Even as late as 2009, smartphone penetration in North America was low.[9]

It was in 2009, however, that the revolutionary iPhone and Google Android shifted the smartphone from enterprise to the mass market consumer (at the expense of business-oriented operating systems such as Windows Mobile and BlackBerry), and since then smartphones have increased their popularity to become the dominant device in the mass market (at least in North America and Western Europe).[10] As a result smartphones have enjoyed the largest selection and advertising among carriers, who are devoting less and less store space and marketing to feature phones and dumbphones.[11]

Difference between smartphone and feature phone

While a feature phone is a low-end device and smartphone a high-end one, there is no standard way of distinguishing them. Smartphone and feature phone are not mutually exclusive categories.

A significant difference between smartphones and feature phones is that the advanced application programming interfaces (APIs) on smartphones for running third-party applications can allow those applications to have better integration with the phone's OS and hardware than is typical with feature phones. In comparison, feature phones more commonly run on proprietary firmware, with third-party software support through platforms such as Java ME or BREW. While advanced APIs appear on smartphones first, they are gradually moving to feature phones; for instance as of 2012 smartphones (especially flagship phones) are often the first to run the latest OS version (i.e. the HTC One X which ships with Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, while the midrange HTC Desire C has Android 2.3 Gingerbread). Often OS is no longer a distinguishing factor, such as the Nokia Lumia 900 smartphone and Lumia 710 feature phone, both of which run Windows Phone 7.5, however the Lumia 900 has among other things a better camera and a larger screen.

The price difference between a smartphone and feature phone is often used to distinguish the two devices. As of March 2012, Canadian cellular service providers offer the choice of purchasing smartphone upfront for $450-650 CAD on "no term" (month-by-month), or by signing 3-year voice and data contract to waive most of the handset purchase cost (there are no waivers for a voice-only plan). The no term price for a feature phone, by contrast, is typically half or even less than that of a smartphone (topping out at $300 CAD), and this cost can be waived with a 3-year voice-only plan. Below feature phones are basic mobile phones or "dumb phones" which are intended for pay-as-you-go customers and often retail for $0.[12] Smartphones, while improving their features and capabilities, however, have always maintained their price advantage over feature phones.[13] Pricing structure is still a grey area, for instance at Rogers Wireless, the Sony Xperia ion was originally released with smartphone pricing in June 2012, however poor sales led to that device being demoted to feature phone pricing by December 2012 of that year. By contrast, the iPhone 4 8 GB which debuted in mid-2010 is still sold as a smartphone by Rogers as of December 2012.

A complication in distinguishing between smartphones and feature phones is that over time the capabilities of new models of feature phones can increase to exceed those of phones that had been promoted as smartphones in the past. Because technology changes rapidly, what was a smartphone ten years ago may be considered only a feature phone today. For example, today's feature phones typically also serve as a personal digital assistant (PDA) and portable media player and have capabilities such as cameras, touchscreen, GPS navigation, Wi-Fi, and mobile broadband access.

External links

• Media related to Mobile phones at Wikimedia Commons