Most smartphones are under-utilized

Nearly one out of every four cellphones in use is a smartphone. This increased penetration means that more users now have a ton of amazing features at their fingertips., Ironically though, not everybody with a smartphone is taking advantage of the applications available. From early 2009 to early 2010, average monthly data use by a smartphone owner has increased 230%  from 90MB to 298MB. Still, smartphones as a group are not being utilized for data as much as they can be. According to the Nielsen company, 99% of users would fall within AT&T's top data plan without having to pay for overage and there are still others who bought their smartphone before the carriers started requiring a data plan, and use the phone for the most basic of features. Based on statistics compiled by Nielsen, 25% of smartphone users do not use data at all. On the other hand, the top 6% of users are consuming 50% of all smartphone data which leads the ratings firm to conclude that usage based pricing would be fair. Another conclusion by Nielsen is that with a quarter of smartphone owners not taking advantage of the phone in their hand, more education is needed to teach people how to use all of the features on their handset. In the report, the company notes that these people have purchased a device that has more computing power than what was used to send men to the moon, and yet they only use the phone to make calls and send text messages. The report was compiled by studying 60,000 mobile phone bills monthly.

source: TheNielsenCompany via NYTimes