The dark side of the smartphone

Sprint sent out a rather rosy press release today stating that its surveys have found smartphones will be a hot item this holiday season, despite expectations of dismal sales across the retail sector. Smartphones appeared on one-third of the wish lists of likely gift-receivers, and gift-givers seemed more inclined to accommodate those wishes. Sprint found that many parents considered smartphones the perfect new toy for teenagers, with 35% thinking about buying such a device for someone between the ages of 13 and 17.

Though Sprint is not the most unbiased of researchers, there’s a lot of independent data to back up the carrier’s optimism (and Sprint needs to find optimism where it can). ComScore surveys have discovered that smartphones are moving down the income scale. New smartphones such as the iPhone 3G, the BlackBerry Storm and Bold, and the HTC-made T-Mobile G1 are first and foremost consumer devices rather than business-professional devices. ABI is tracking an explosion in mobile Web browsing fueled by smartphones.

But the smartphone isn’t all gravy for the wireless industry. According to Bernstein Research, there will be a few nasty side effects as the smartphone begins to dominate. The biggest impact will be on subscription growth. Wireless penetration in the U.S. already has reached 85%, and much of that is due to single customers having multiple subscriptions — laptop data cards or a separate BlackBerry for work. But as smartphones become more sophisticated and more stylish, they take over the roles these secondary devices once performed. It’s ironic that Research In Motion created one of the first stand-alone data devices — the original BlackBerry had no voice capabilities — but now is leading the charge to converge the enterprise and consumer smartphone. And as mobile browsers and e-mail capabilities on smartphones become more sophisticated, more mobile workers find themselves leaving their laptops (and their associated data cards) in the office or at home.

“The very versatility of these devices has a dark side,” wrote Craig Moffett, analyst with Bernstein, in a recent study on smartphone penetration. “Smartphones like the Apple iPhone potentially reducewireless penetration, inasmuch as they potentially replacemultiple subscriptions — say, a BlackBerry plusa separate cell phone — with a single device.”