True or false. Everyone has or will eventually have a smartphone? How would you answer this question? Well, majority of students answered, “True.” Despite many predicting this to happen around 2015ish, no one knows exactly when it will take place. For mobile marketers, feature phone stats are all they have to go with and with the U.S. alone being a massive market for feature phones, finding out who owns dumb feature phones is important in order to determine marketing strategies.

What are dumb phone subscribers statistics in the U.S.? One word: huge. According to a Nielsen’s February 2012 report, about 49.7 percent of total U.S. mobile subscribers are dumb phone users. With an estimated 331 million wireless subscribers, which equates to approximately 165 million subscribers, who would not want such a huge number of people to engage?

The demographics are even more amazing. There are about 44-47 percent of dumb phone users earning $100,000 while subscribers earning between $100,000 -150,000 account for 38 percent. Twenty-five percent of those earning over $150,000 are dumb phone users. When it comes to age demographics, about 46 percent of those between the ages of 18-24 are still dumb phone users while 35 percent of 25-34-year olds use feature phones. Fifty-nine percent of 55-64-year olds are dumb phone users and 45 percent of those above 65 years are on dumb phones. Dumb phone users account for 50 percent among white people, 45 percent among African-Americans and 42 percent of Hispanics. 

According to Nielsen, 80 percent of mobile phone users have sent or received text messages in the last 30 days. With all phones, dumb or smart, having the ability to receive text messages, text messaging is king. An all-inclusive mobile marketing strategy that directly targets dumb phone users by use of text messaging can thus be, not DUMB but SMART, and at the same time a viable engagement tactic and a way to connect with existing mobile subscribers.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO West 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. ITEXPO (News - Alert) offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO click here.