Mopocket has an interesting article on mobile phone buyer trends in the US based on a  study conducted by  the NPD Wireless group.

Some interesting facts from the report:

• Preference towards “good brands”
• Low price is not all that important
• Men are more likely than women are to care more about having the latest technology, a highly regarded brand, long battery life, and the key capabilities and features they want.
• Women more so than men, tend to be motivated more by easy-to-use flip phones and price considerations.
• Young buyers look for “cool,” middle-aged look for a wide range of capabilities, while people past middle aged want a flip phone.
• Manufacturers offering a wide array of flip phones have enjoyed more success rate with flip phones being the second most cited reason for choosing a phone

Link to report

People surely are moving away from free eye-candy phones towards phones which offer them the functionality they need. I’ve observed these changes around me as well, since quite a few of my friends and acquaintances are adopting phones Symbian, Windows Mobile and Blackberry phones. It was sort of expected, with phones becoming a lot more than a simple phone. People use them as organizers, email/word processing and multimedia devices.

I really don’t understand why the U.S. market is all about flip phones.  There seems to be no logical reason! Is it because of the compact form factor?

Graphs from the report: