People over 30 hate cell phones

I think this is actually a really interesting study, but I think the title is misleading.

The essence of the research the article is, badly, paraphrasing is that people over 30 find the number of features on cell phones intimidating. This includes feature as simple as text, the phonebook and voicemail.

A good friend of mine used to work at Vodafone in a product department some years ago. Back then they were talking about launching simplified phone for older people, I'm surprised we've not seen more in this direction.

I think launching a phone that did the phonebook, voicemail and text incredibly well would sell like hotcakes. My mother (62) recently bought a new phone based on the size of front for the ABC, DEF, etc on the keypad so she was able to text.

Just the other night, on the train home, I listened to some pompous old geezer ranting about his phone. When he was skiing he collided with someone and a bit of his phone broke off. This was the phone's fault. When he was climbing a ladder to clear leaves out of his gutter, with his phone and his keys in his pocket, the keys scratched the screen of the phone. This was the phone's fault. And on and on and on... It's nothing to do with age. He was just too damn stupid to own one.

I wouldn't quote this article, or even use it as a guide. 'Over 30' is far to broad a demographic, and phone companies are targetting devices to different age groups.

I would suspect the iPhone market is targetted at 18-40 year olds (though more heavily in the 18-30 range), while blackberry is working on 30-50 range.

Just like most technology, the younger the user, the more features they are going to use. But saying 'Over 30' is pretty meaningless.