There are many perspectives on what teenagers want out of a phone, 
however there are very few that are written by anything other than 20 and 30 something year old men with degrees in consulting.
So the Million Dollar Question for a young person Google or Apple?
I wrote this article with the intent of providing the opinion of a typical UK young person giving a personal perspective from myself and my peers and the teenagers I know. For those of you out there who think I get it wrong, leave a comment below.
What we want
First off I must clarify that the needs and desires of teens differ hugely to those of adults. First of all, we tend to text more, but use less than adults when it comes to calling. This affects what phones we will choose and whether we (as teens) will even select a smartphone.
Yet many teens do possess smartphones. This is because our social connectivity does not just lie within texting each other, it is with the Internet, Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Twitter, the list goes on. We are in the age of the internet and we need to be constantly connected, hence the recent Htc Wildfire which is aimed at the youth market.
The critical factor- Cash!!
Money is the fundamental factor in people choosing their phones and is even more important for us youths. No matter how pretty the iPhone 4 looks or how sweet that Nexus One with 2.2 is, with prices increasing as well as contract lengths it can be more difficult to get the ideal phone. Looking at the image below from Nielson you can see that iPhones are mainly owned by rich males, with Android being more middle classed and unisex phones.
An important factor that all smartphone manufacturers have to take into account is how much will people pay for a smartphone. The answer is measured in percentages of income which is why the majority of iPhone owners have a large incomes, and the generally more budget Android phones are more evenly spread around the lower income brackets. With the iPhone 4 starting at £500 it is easy to see why the majority of owners have large incomes, and for us teens it makes it very difficult to purchase these phones. Android offers many cheaper lower-end smartphones (HTC Wildfire, Backflip, Moto Charm etc) which are more appealing to us teens.
From what I have said in Part 1, Android takes the crown by offering cheaper phones which more devices aimed specifically at teens.
Check out part 2 for continuation on the story and a final summary of what makes each of them better than the other…
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Android vs iPhone: A young person’s view Part 1
There are many perspectives on what teenagers want out of a phone,
however there are very few that are written by anything other than 20 and 30 something year old men with degrees in consulting.
So the Million Dollar Question for a young person Google or Apple?
I wrote this article with the intent of providing the opinion of a typical UK young person giving a personal perspective from myself and my peers and the teenagers I know. For those of you out there who think I get it wrong, leave a comment below.
What we want
First off I must clarify that the needs and desires of teens differ hugely to those of adults. First of all, we tend to text more, but use less than adults when it comes to calling. This affects what phones we will choose and whether we (as teens) will even select a smartphone.
Yet many teens do possess smartphones. This is because our social connectivity does not just lie within texting each other, it is with the Internet, Facebook, Myspace, Bebo, Twitter, the list goes on. We are in the age of the internet and we need to be constantly connected, hence the recent Htc Wildfire which is aimed at the youth market.
The critical factor- Cash!!
Money is the fundamental factor in people choosing their phones and is even more important for us youths. No matter how pretty the iPhone 4 looks or how sweet that Nexus One with 2.2 is, with prices increasing as well as contract lengths it can be more difficult to get the ideal phone. Looking at the image below from Nielson you can see that iPhones are mainly owned by rich males, with Android being more middle classed and unisex phones.
An important factor that all smartphone manufacturers have to take into account is how much will people pay for a smartphone. The answer is measured in percentages of income which is why the majority of iPhone owners have a large incomes, and the generally more budget Android phones are more evenly spread around the lower income brackets. With the iPhone 4 starting at £500 it is easy to see why the majority of owners have large incomes, and for us teens it makes it very difficult to purchase these phones. Android offers many cheaper lower-end smartphones (HTC Wildfire, Backflip, Moto Charm etc) which are more appealing to us teens.
From what I have said in Part 1, Android takes the crown by offering cheaper phones which more devices aimed specifically at teens.
Check out part 2 for continuation on the story and a final summary of what makes each of them better than the other…
Related posts: