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A feature phone is a mobile phone which is priced at the mid-range in a wireless provider's hardware lineup. It is intended for customers who want a moderately priced and multipurpose phone without the expense of a high-end smartphone. 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 or may not be considered a smartphone, due to a lack of more advanced attributes. Due to the progression in capabilities, current mid-range devices in a carrier's lineup today may be more advanced than previous high-end devices just a few years ago.

Feature phones may often be marketed by certain carriers under various terms; Rogers Wireless labels them as "smartphone lite" 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 as smartphones become more popular, as half of all mobile phones will be smartphones.

The reason for the shift is because high-end smartphones have higher margins compared to low-end smartphones or feature phones which rely mainly on volume, thus high-end 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. 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).

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.

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). 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.

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 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.

Back in 2009, 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. It should be noted, though, that many of these proprietary software platforms, such as S60 (Nokia, Samsung and LG), UIQ (Sony Ericsson and Motorola) and MOAP(S) (Japanese only such as Fujitsu, Sharp etc.), which were based on Symbian, were gradually phased out in 2009-11. During that period the manufacturers shifted their lineups, usually the high-end handsets first then followed by the mid-range and low-end offerings, to advanced OSes such as Android and Windows Phone.

The price difference between a smartphone and feature phone remains one of the widely used attributes to distinguish the two devices. As of March 2012, the big three Canadian cellular service providers (Rogers, Bell, Telus) 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. Smartphones, while improving their features and capabilities, however, have always maintained their price advantage over feature phones. 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 (which reflects Apple's success in keeping the price of its phones constant).

References

1. http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,1237,t=feature+phone&i=62894,00.asp
2. ^ http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddhixon/2012/11/13/two-weeks-with-a-dumb-phone/
3. "Cell Phones, Smartphones, and Prepaid Phones".
4. "Wireless Phones and superphones from Bell Mobility".
5. Don Kellogg (1 September 2011). "40 Percent of U.S. Mobile Users Own Smartphones; 40 Percent are Android". Nielsen Company. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
6. "Nokia's continued feature phone focus may be one of their smartest moves".
7. Ina Fried (28 August 2012). "Half of All Mobile Phones Will Be Smartphones by 2013, Two Years Earlier Than Forecast". All Things D. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
8. Ashraf Eassa (12 February 2013). "Nokia's Lumia Strategy Will Pay Off Nicely". Seeking Alpha.
9. Chris Smith (24 December 2012). "Galaxy S4 to spearhead impressive Samsung year, company to sell 390 million smartphones in 2013". Android Authority.
10. "LG Optimus L7 Review". CNET. 28 June 2012.
11. ^ Zachary Lutz (29 June 2012). "LG Optimus L7 Review". Engadget.
12. Hugo Miller (11 January 2013). "RIM says 150 carriers keep it from Palm's fate". TheSpec.
13. Jason Perlow (8 November 2009). "In Smartphone Wars, Darwinism Triumphs Over Intelligent Design". ZDNet.
14. "Feature Phone". Phone Scoop. Retrieved 9 May 2010. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
15. Andrew Nusca (20 August 2009). "Smartphone vs. feature phone arms race heats up; which did you buy?". ZDNet.
16. http://www.brighthand.com/article/Study_Says_Smartphones_Will_Outsell_Handhelds/
17. "Smartphone definition from PC Magazine Encyclopedia". PC Magazine. Retrieved 2011-12-15.
18. Nicole Lee (1 March 2010). "The 411: Feature phones vs. smartphones". CNet.
19. "Smartphone". Phone Scoop. Retrieved 2011-12-15. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
23. Knowlton Thomas (19 July 2010). "Canada's wireless leaders form excessively lucrative oligopoly, reap world-high profits". TechVibes.

External links

• Media related to Mobile phones at Wikimedia Commons

• Mobile phones
• Information appliances