The nature of iPhones & their owners

By Adriana Lee November 10, 2010 5:24 pm EST Comments

So who are iPhone users in general, and what do we want? Well, according to Pageonce, we are spenders and what we want is to charge up a storm.

The company compiled data from users across the smartphone platforms, withÂ 5,000 or more users per OSÂ (and 275,000 users in all). It found that, when it comes to credit card debt, iPhone owners beat out everyone, includingÂ ï»¿BlackBerry and AndroidÂ â€” withÂ 35% higher balance on monthly credit cards statements than Windows Mobile users, who fall in last place.Â ï»¿(ï»¿Yes, there are still some of those out there.)Â And yet, says the data, we aren’t the ones with the highest cell phone bills. That distinction belongs to WinMo users, oddly enough. In fact, on average, we have the lowest mobile phone bills.

WinMo users’ average monthly cell phone bill: $205.33

Android:Â ï»¿$196.94

BlackBerry:Â ï»¿$194.35

iPhone: $164.91

Now that’s a shocker, at least on the surface. But let’s take a closer look: The BB figure may have to do with extra changes for enterprise and business features. And these figures don’t account for family plans vs. individual charges. PhoneDog’s Taylor Martin guesses that there are many people out there who may have broken free of family plans on other carriers just to sign up as an individual on AT&T for the iPhone. This data doesn’t adjust for that.

As for the iPhone itself, another company named Square Trade seems to be of two minds about that as well. The iPhone has made its list of most reliable smartphones. After checking out the failures of roughly 50,000 smartphones, it determined that the iPhone 3GS and BlackBerries are the two least accident-prone ones. But interestingly, the iPhone 4 is the most, with a 13.8% accident rate.

But there’s more to reliability than accidents. The company also factored rates of normal malfunctions into the mix, and got a different result.

The iPhone 4 was the most reliable phone, with 2.1% projected to have a non-accident malfunction in the first 12 months. The major makers of Android devices, Motorola and HTC, were also very reliable, with just 2.3% and 3.7%.

BlackBerry and other smart phones were less reliable, with 6.3% and 6.7% failing in the first 12 months of use.

Accidental damage is responsible for over 75% of smart phone failures. BlackBerry devices had the lowest one-year accident rate at 6.7%, and the iPhone 4 had the highest at 9.4%.

The iPhone 3GS had the lowest overall failure rates, with just 11.7% failing over the course of a year, and the aggregated pool of other smart phones had the highest failure rate at 16.9%.

(The iPhone 4 hasn’t been out for 12 months, so some of this data was based on projections.)

Do you or your device match up with any of these findings? Are you a spend-heavy shopper with small phone bills and an accident-prone (yet otherwise reliable) iPhone 4? Weigh in below.

Via: PageOnce, PhoneDog, BoyGenius Report

Ashkan

I had a question. Why do people spend so much on their phone's monthly bills in America? I live in Australia, and i pay a LOT less. I bought my iPhone 4 outright for 859 dollars AUD. But for my cap plan, i pay 19 dollars a month for 700 dollars credit and 500mb download limit on 3G. If there is still more needed, the 30 dollar plan from the same company gets you $1000 credit for text and call and 1.5GB download. I was wondering... how much do people in America use on their phone that they end up paying SOOO much each month?

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JRB

I think one of the reasons we spend so much on our phones,is because they have become so much more then just phones to Americans. They do so much more then just make calls and text people. I have an unlimited data plan and while I wish I could lower it to a les expensive one, I use to much data too. I use 5GB of data at least a month. The plans here only go as high as 2GB.

Wow that is a lot of download. I am a phone freak myself, i download a lot on my phone but since im a uni student, i have wifi at home, and wifi at uni, so really i dont download much on 3G. I always thought Americans are so lucky they get iPhones for just 200 dollars, but i never knew they pay over 150 dollars for their phones per month. Even here in Australia, the unlimited plans are $99 a month which includes any phone you want over 24 months. So you can choose any phone on that plan and get it for free on a 24 months plan of unlimited text/call and data.

Yeah and $99 will usually get you an unlimited plan just depends on which carrier you go with. Just the iPhone is only on one carrier here so there isn't any choice. And I'm on a plan with several lines and we pay about $200,but that's unlimited data,msg,and a good amount of minutes(for 5 lines).