The chart above is taken from the recently published Ofcom report, The Communication Market 2012, and shows some interesting analysis of the consequences of smartphone ownership… that people spend less time using other devices and media when they own a smartphone.
It’s not exactly rocket science, that – we only have a certain number of hours in the day, and so we can only spend a finite amount of time doing stuff. A new thing to do stuff on means less time doing stuff with other things. Not one of my most lucid sentences, that.
What I find more interesting about these numbers is the potential that smartphones have to kill off single-purpose “devices”. From my own consumption patterns, I:
- only occasionally use my SLR or video camera
- never get the point and click camera out of the box in the loft
- am tempted to start using the phone for SatNav instead of the built into the car one, because the Audi one is not network-connected
- barely buy a newspaper although consume loads of newspaper content through podcasts, dedicated Apps, and Flipboard
- only ever listen to music via Spotify on the phone
Whilst smartphones are obviously reducing down the time owners spend using PCs (and that’s the same for me too), what they really seem to be killing off are single-purpose devices whether cameras, SatNavs or newspapers. The future seems to be one where multiple-purpose smart devices substitute for specialist devices. Again, maybe not rocket science – but it’s interesting to see some of the numbers behind it.
mmitII 