We suppose the uptick in smartphone demand could be to blame, depending on your perspective, but regardless of semantics, a new study put out by J.D. Power and Associates has found that surging interest in high-end handsets is causing the average purchase price of mobiles to shoot upward. Compared to 2007, consumers are currently paying around $9 more on average per phone. The average price rose to $101, up from $92 just six months prior, and it also marks the highest figure found since the study's inception in 2003. Analysts are pegging recent demand in RIM, Palm (saywha?) and Apple devices as the primary culprit, and it's noted that the average price paid for a smartphone these days is $208. Not surprisingly, these folks also found that the percentage of customers who receive free phones on contract has sank from 36% to 33% in the past six months. If you're the number loving type, be sure and hit the read link for lots, lots more where this came from.

[Via RCRWirelessNews]

Unless you've been squarely camped out under an atypically large boulder the past few months, you aren't apt to be taken aback by this news. Sure enough, handset sales declined 22-percent in Q1 2008, though the industry did move some 31 million mobiles during the post-holiday quarter. It was noted, however, that smartphones comprised 17-percent of all mobile sales, which marks a 10-percent increase from the prior quarter. When taking a look at the top five handset manufacturers, you'll find Motorola shakily perched at the top (27-percent), while RIM slipped past Sanyo to grab the five spot with 5-percent. Check the read link for all the gory details.

Hold everything -- did you have any idea surging cellphone use was putting a damper on landline utilization? Oh, right, common knowledge. Anywho, a recent study conducted here in America found that three in ten households actually relied solely or primarily on their mobile to communicate. In the latter half of 2007, it was discovered that 16-percent of domiciles didn't even have a landline, while 13-percent had one but took all (or nearly all) of their calls via cell. Just to put things in perspective, only 5-percent of US homes were cellphone-only in 2004, while 1.082-percent had not yet surrendered their can-and-string. If you're one of those number lovers, hold your head up high and hit the read link for lots more data about this totally engrossing topic.

[Image courtesy of Preston LNO]

Oh sure, Americans are adamantly against texting while driving (in theory), but that's not stopping those mischievous Gen Y-ers from getting their SMS on while behind the wheel. According to a new survey of 1,200 people conducted by Nationwide Mutual Insurance (we know, we know), a third of the Gen Y-ers admitted to "always multitasking while driving," and while the "always" bit does indeed frighten us a tad, the real juice was in the next statistic: 37-percent said they sent text messages while driving. Before you start belaboring the imprudent youth, think long and hard about your own in-car cellphone usage -- remember that time you just had to reply "y w pep plz" in order to salvage your friend's pizza order? Tsk tsk.

[Via About]

Although it should be painfully obvious, we can't deny that chatting about sensitive information in public takes place practically everywhere. To that end, a new study commissioned by Vodafone UK found that over 70-percent of all workers "talk business on their mobile phones in public, with one-in-five talking about business-critical subjects such as sales leads." Worse still, 15-percent admitted to "openly discussing confidential new products or services whilst traveling," while 26-percent admitted that they have actually followed up on a lead in which they received via listening in to another's public call. Not surprisingly, the company recommends that individuals utilize more discreet methods of communicating in public, suggesting texting and emailing in particular. Of course, it's a good bit more difficult to tell a story through those two methods, but it's a lot better than having your most promising client snatched out from under you, yeah?

[Via textually, image courtesy of Miloh]

There's little doubt that Linux has quite a bit going for it in the mobile realm, but a recent report put out by ABI Research asserts that just about one in every five mid- to high-end handsets sold in 2013 will boast a Linux-based OS. Citing the mounting momentum behind LiMo Foundation as well as the alleviation of "issues with framework fragmentation and silicon requirements," the research firm is projecting Linux to be an integral part of some 20-percent of higher-end mobiles in just 5 years. ABI Research's VP even noted that "Linux OS solutions will be far more cost-effective than incumbent solutions, even when silicon requirements are taken into account, given that a fuller application layer will be included in the standard package and that the burden of customization falls mostly on the independent software vendor." Hey, you won't find us kvetching about the proliferation of open-source.

[Via mocoNews]

While Verizon and T-Mobile shared honors in a customer service survey just two months back, it was regional carrier Alltel snagging most of the gold in a recent J.D. Power and Associates survey of wireless call quality. Reportedly, said carrier was able to take the "sole or partial top spot in three of the report's six regions," while Verizon stood on top in two regions, US Cellular in one and T-Mobile (along with Alltel) in another. The data was gathered from 24,570 respondents that were questioned about dropped calls, static / interference, failed connection on the first try, voice distortion, echoes, no immediate voicemail notification, and no immediate text message notification. Interestingly, the study also found that "customers using 3G handsets experienced fewer call quality issues," and while call quality problems reported by folks using CDMA happened around 14 times out of every 100 calls, nearly a quarter of calls from those on the iDEN network were primarily about problems with call quality. Check out the full spill in the read below, we won't tell anyone you're a number lover.

Using Time Magazine's Inventions of 2007 list as its basis, a poll of 590 CEOs in South Korea has named the iPhone the most inspirational invention of last year -- a finding echoed by Time's own Invention Of the Year award. The best part? The poll was conducted by the Samsung Economic Research Institute, which is affiliated with -- you guessed it -- Samsung. Go figure.

Another day, another award; yep, it's business as usual for the folks over at T-Mobile and Verizon. Vocal Laboratories' most recent quarterly "SectorPulse" survey has found that the US' second and fourth largest carriers take top honors for quality of customer service, receiving "A" grades in both caller satisfaction and call completion. What's "call completion," you ask? Nope, it's not a measure of a customer service agent's ability to quickly and efficiently hang up on you, it indicates the frequency with which callers' issues are resolved on the first call. For some of us, it really doesn't matter how many awards T-Mobile wins in this department, it's 3G or bust. Maybe that really is just us, though.

Though we can't say we're entirely shocked -- after all, it's not like some other handset will really satisfy when you've had your eye on that one -- a recent survey conducted by Opinion Research Corporation found that smartphones were the number one returned gadget this holiday season. Granted, the study was one of online nature, and neither Apple's iPhone nor any of RIM's BlackBerrys were included (um, why not?), but we digress. Reportedly, more than one-fifth (21-percent, to be precise) of smartphone recipients surveyed said they hustled back to the store shortly after gift giving was over and promptly returned it, and comically enough, the "inability to understand the product setup process was cited as the primary reason" that consumers did so. 'Tis a shame, really. [Warning: PDF read link]

[Via textually, image courtesy of LawyersAndSettlements]

As long as we continue to not drop dead from the use of cellphones in our daily lives, the move away from landlines seems totally inevitable for obvious reasons: convenience, portability, having a single point of contact, the list goes on. The Center for Disease Control's National Health Interview Survey validates that Americans feel the same way, showing an upward tick in the number of homes that have gone exclusively mobile (a weird survey to be fleshing out such fascinating stats on the wireless industry, but whatevs). Overall, 13.9 percent said they've ditched the landlines, but the real story seems to be in the breakdowns; 28 percent of renters were mobile-only compared to just 6.7 percent of homeowners. The 25 to 29 year old age bracket was the most likely to rely solely on their cellphones, with 18 to 24 coming in second -- probably because they're still living under their old-skool parents' roofs, we'd imagine. Homes under the poverty level were also more likely to go strictly with their mobiles, and finally -- here's the CDC's health tie-in -- mobile folks were far more likely to be binge drinkers, smokers, and lack health insurance, though they were also more likely to work out in their spare hours. Now if you'll excuse us, we've gotta go hit the treadmill.

Although "innovative" isn't exactly the word we chose to use when summing up Palm's Centro, apparently the public at large sees things a little differently -- or, so says this report, anyway. According to a buyer behavior writeup from Strategy Analytics, the Centro "attracted the most attention from nearly half of the tested US consumers who are intending to purchase a new mobile device" in Q4, and it even ranked ahead of the second-place Samsung i760 in the "appealing" department. Both of the aforementioned handsets were hailed as the top choices (saywha?) for folks "seeking a multifunction, fully integrated device," while the Nokia Prism and LG Rumor also got a few props along the way. Of course, it's always best to take these "studies" with a healthy serving of salt, but if you wanted something to debate about, you've found it.

[Via MobileWhack]

Hello, T-Mobile, anyone home? Despite T-Mobile's giant 2G drag on the overall retail picture, 3G phones outsold their 2G counterparts in the third quarter in the US by a 55 to 45 percent margin. Topping the 3G list was the Motorola RAZR V3m, followed by the LG VX8300 (really?). The number one seller overall was -- you guessed it -- the lowly RAZR V3, a phone that has seemingly well outlasted its retail viability but continues to hustle off shelves as long as carriers are willing to offer them at bargain basement prices. Oh, and yes, we know the whole 3G thing isn't really your fault, T-Mobile!

[Via textually.org]

While we've seen a variety of surveys pitting the iPhone against its most notable rivals, a recent study conducted by the NPD Group breaks down the numbers behind who left what phone (and what carrier) to acquire an iPhone. Not surprisingly, iPhone early adopters were "ten times more likely than other new phone buyers to have previously owned a Treo and three times more likely to have owned a T-Mobile branded phone, such as the popular Sidekick model." When it came to carriers, Alltel and T-Mobile were said to have lost the most customers to AT&T, as consumers who "switched carriers to buy an iPhone were three times more likely to switch from Alltel or T-Mobile than from other carriers." Notably, the lack of "corporate email support" was pinpointed as the main reason that many BlackBerry users didn't make the leap, but it did praise the iPhone for helping to "bridge the gap between consumer-focused feature phones and productivity-focused smartphones."

In of the less glamorous studies we've seen, a team of researchers from a variety of universities came together to study the possible link between walking and communicating via cellphone. In essence, researchers reckoned that by rigging up a Windows Mobile-based handset to vibrate slightly to the rhythm of one's footsteps, the other participate would simply fall in line (and have a more enriched experience) without actually being near the other individual. In testing, however, it was noticed that although the vibrations did help synchronize participants' steps when they were reciting scripted dialogue, a fair amount of subjects managed to mimic each other's gait sans assistance when carrying on a genuine conversation. If you're not snoring by now, feel free to hit the read link to view the research in its entirety. [Warning: PDF read link]

[Via Textually]