Though handset design is becoming more important, as is true in just about every area of consumer electronics, the reason people use devices is vastly more important than cosmetics. Or so it would seem. A survey conducted by Mobile Online Testing Exchange and eCRUSH finds that 77 percent of users between 13 and 17 years of age find the benefit of a mobile phone is the "convenience of being able to communicate from anywhere."

 

About 75 percent of respondents say the "security of being able to reach family" is a major benefit. That’s a finding some of you might find slightly humorous. Perhaps it shows the importance of “I need a ride,” “I need more money” or “can I go” messages to parental units.

 

Much lower on the list was friends' admiration of their cell phone features at 41 percent of respondents.

 

The perceived benefits also match up well with the “feeling” teens say they have about their devices. About 71 percent say the feeling their phones convey is “connected with friends.” About 63 percent say mobile phones provide a feeling of being connected with their families. We should be happy “families” score so well, as some of us might have suspected “friends” would rank much higher than “family.”

 

About 61 percent say the phone makes them feel “responsible.”

 

About 46 percent say the phone makes them feel “cool.” But there are other responses that collectively illustrate the importance of the “cool” factor. Some 30 percent of respondents say their phones make them feel “fashionable.” Some 27 percent say their phones make them feel “trendy.”

 

So the ability to stay connected clearly is paramount. But “coolness,” “being trendy” and being “in fashion” are perhaps three quarters as important as remaining connected to friends and family.

 

There might be a significant shift coming, though. The study suggests mobile phones rapidly are becoming the new medium for viewing music and other short-form and user-generated videos.  About 41 percent of teens surveyed have video downloading capability on their cell phones and approximately half of those teens are actually downloading and viewing videos.

 

Among these teens, music videos are the most watched type, followed by user generated content.

 

The study found that teens are practical, not simply enamored of fashion. Of all the gadgets and devices available today, the cell phone is the favorite. Some 51 percent of teens said they "absolutely could not live without" their cell phones.

 

When teens were asked about the mobile phone features they have and use, text messaging was overwhelmingly cited as the feature they use most, followed by the ability to customize wall paper, take digital pictures, and play games which come with the phone,

 

In what has to be a pointed response, just 15 percent reported wanting the “picture messaging” capability, which is the salient example of Multimedia Message Service, a carrier-developed rich media messaging platform.

 

So far, it appears, teens value text messaging the most of any feature except the ability to talk, customize with wallpapers and take pictures. Apparently, sharing photos is not close to the top of features teens think they really must have.

 

The failure of MMS to make much of any contribution to usage or carrier revenue streams should provide another reminder that carriers aren’t necessarily very good at predicting what users will want to do with communications. Simple text messaging wasn’t envisioned as the revenue driver it now is. And MMS was supposed to offer a richer form of text messaging and drive revenues from third generation broadband mobile networks. But it simply hasn’t worked out.

 

Teens seem happy enough with simple text messaging, and have largely ignored rich forms of texting.