The development of smartphones has been rapidly increasing and changing the way we respond to society. Today, smartphones have an application or “app” for almost everything. With the rise of smartphones also came the improvement of networks and wireless internet for phones. Today most Americans have their smartphones running on 3g or a 4g network and can attain Wi-Fi from almost anywhere. All these fancy features in a phone have really made people become dependent on this small piece of technology. If you look back ten years ago, cellphones were still basic and the internet browser on a phone from back then was nothing like the internet browser we have in our cellphones today. Now smartphones are basically a miniature computer, so users can go onto any website from their phones and it would look similar, if not the same, from how it looks on their PCs. Now if people need to look up something really quick on the internet, they don’t have to try to locate a computer because they can just look up what they need to on their smartphones at any time. Therefore slowly, as smartphone technology has increased, more and more people obtain smartphones and even become more addicted to their phones because of the dependency they attained to them.
Well why are we so dependent on smart phones, because they make our lives a lot simpler. As I previously have stated, having a smartphone now does not require me to log on to my laptop and look something up because I can just easily take out my phone and look it up on there. Besides the browser, a lot of websites now have an app that you can download so people with smartphones don’t even need to get onto their browser. When you download an app, for example like the Facebook app, it is like having a shortcut on your phones homepage to easily access it. You can even get notifications sent to your phone when you download the Facebook app so you know when you have to check it. But besides social networking website applications, you can also download an app for almost anything. The apps range from games to utilities so it has become a phone that can be useful for a person at any age.
However this shift from regular cellphones to smartphones has been one that is still ongoing and actually rapidly increasing. But when did this transition begin and why? Although cellphones have been out since 1983, the transitions throughout the 1980s and 90s have been a lot slower until smartphones were released. From the time the first iPhone was released in 2007, the technology and business for cellphones have become a lot more competitive and have been growing rapidly. This is mainly because the demand for cellphones has also increased from the time the first few cellphones were released.
Prior to the release of the first iPhone, phones were pretty basic but there were improvements by cellphones having basic applications and aesthetically looking better. However the iPhone in 2007 was released along with its apple app store and it gave rise to the world of smart phones. The success of this phone lead competitors create their own software and apply it to cellphones like Google did with the Android a year later in 2008. (Ivanov 10). One major feature these phones had was the fact that they were touch screen phones which lead to an increase of new phones that would be touchscreen as well. The phones were also quicker and had access to Wi-F. Digitally, the screen of the phone was a lot clearer than phones before. This attracted many consumers as well to buy the new and improved cellphones.
Since the rise of smartphones is still in its primitive stage, there aren’t any solid theories on how they have become so successful. However, we have seen a change in technology from beepers, to cellphones, to smartphones. Since smartphones have been created there actually has not been a change in technology but instead there have been improvements in technology. Smartphones are still cellphones, and they still provide what a basic cellphone would too which is calling and texting. But now cellphones act like computers as well which shows that the technology has no changed but just improved (Ansari and Garud, 2009). Besides the fact that we have the technology available to create such brilliant phones, consumers themselves are the basis for why the numbers of these smartphones have grown so much. Since so many people are buying smartphones now, manufacturers are racing to constantly create new features for the phone and upgrade their software that will meet the demand and entertainment for consumers (Ansari and Garud, 2009). Therefore this leads to the motivation for smartphone manufacturers to improve their technology because without human needs for technology there would be no point in creating and upgrading smartphones.
The multi-level perspective theory (MLP) is a research method that was illustrated by Frank W. Geels to explain how the changes occur in technology for smartphones. For example, how certain pieces of technology were incorporated into another to satisfy human needs, like a GPS into a smartphone. In the MLP theory, a process called “niche-culmination” is explained which talks about a certain route that improvement in smartphones are made. At first, the technological aspects of the phone are improved, but then as a result of the technological improvements there has been a strong effect on society that now the smartphones are being improved because of social circumstances (Geels 2002). Like the example I briefly mentioned earlier with the GPS, one can see that at first a GPS was incorporated into a cellphone to help people locate themselves but now for most applications a GPS is required to have on a phone in order to track your location. For example, when a person downloads an app to locate restaurants of the type of food their craving, the app requires the cellphone to have a GPS so it can track your location and help you locate restaurants nearby your current location. Although the MLP theory is not a concrete theory yet, it shows a correlation on how technology for smartphones improves because of human use.
The rise of smartphones as we can see has really been mainly because of consumers and smartphone users that cause them to become so popular. But now we can shift to the main topic on why have users made them become so popular. We noticed that hand-set manufacturers create apps and improve software’s because they research and notice what people use and need the most on the a phone. Apps on a cellphone today are becoming quite popular, people are constantly downloading new apps that can either help them out personally, entertain them, or another form of communication. The two most popular app stores are known to be the Apple App Store and Google’s Android market. With the apple store having over 350,000 apps to download and the android market having over 150,000 apps, it’s not hard to find useful apps that people will want (Hambien 2011).
Over the years, texting became a vital form of communication which led to the increasing amount of people who purchased cellphones. With smartphones now, people can also check their email through the internet browser and even connect their email to receive them directly to their phone with the applications that smartphones provide. Therefore smartphone owners can check their email at any point of the day, which makes it easier for people that work to work even when they’re not at home or at their job. Smartphones also have applications that include planners and calendars that can keep people updated at all times of the day. Smartphone owners now don’t need to carry around agendas because their phones now have one incorporated into them.
Additionally, phones now have cameras as well that can take pictures and even record videos. A lot of the youth of the population does depend on their smartphones to take pictures because the camera quality has improved on these phones over the years and it is more convenient to carry just your phone than to carry a digital camera when you go out as well. Smartphone app stores also provide many applications that allow you to edit your pictures from your cellphone to make them look even better. For example, Instagram is a fairly new application that allows users to edit the pictures they take and share them with their friends. It has become a new type of social networking and the only way to use this application is through a smartphone. But besides Instgram, there are many other applications to edit pictures from your phone available. It is so simple to find that all you really need to do is type in “picture editing” into the search bar of the app store and users will receive an abundant amount of apps to choose from.
However the apps provided for a smartphone aren’t only subjected to entertainment and convenience but also for the necessity of certain individuals. There has been a term emerging, “m-health” meaning mobile health. It refers to how smartphones are becoming gradually more important in making health services more efficient in bringing healthcare readily available for users that need it. (Doughty 2011). For example there are now apps that can help people with eyesight deficiencies. Eye glasses and Retina apps for smartphones use the digital camera that’s incorporated into the phone to enlarge labels so people can read them easily and to help identify color of objects, which can help users with colorblindness. There are also apps for people that want to maintain and even lose weight. The Exercise and Calorie Counter app measures the steps you took throughout the day and can help you keep track of a log of the physical activity you’ve done in a certain day. It also helps users calculate the amount of calories they have consumed throughout the day to help them keep track of what they eat. Even though there are websites online that can help you keep track of your weight, providing this sort of help on a phone becomes more practical for people to use on a daily basis since people have easier access to their cellphones.
In conclusion, this transition from regular cellphones to smartphones would have not been success if it was not for the consumers themselves. They’re constant use and necessity of a phone caused smartphone manufactures to upgrade their technology so both the firms and the consumers can benefit. Over the past few years smartphones have been increasing the amount of apps they can provide for smartphone users. Smartphones today act like a computer, and provide many apps that can help improve lives of people with and without disabilities. Hence, we see a rise in the population of smartphone users because they are now more dependent on this piece of technology due its practicality and ease. According to CNN news, half of Americans with mobile phones have smartphones. The numbers will probably continue to increase with technology itself improving making it even cheaper to produce smartphones in the future.