Hasta La Gadget!

The new cellphone killer app is data. Spring Nextel boss Dan Hesse says that voice-use has dropped to less than half of cellphone network traffic.

According to the CTIA, the number text message sent last year was up 50% on the year before. Add to that email, the multitasking nature of SMS and instant-messaging, and the other non-voice-based communications available on our phones today and its easy to see why people prefer to keep their mouths shut.

People see voice as intrusive and as a waste of time, says an article in the New York Times, saving it for a last resort. Think about how annoying it seems to fax people instead of emailing them and you get the idea.

Cellphones aren’t even designed for calling anymore: gone are the days of seeing a grandmother on the bus reading numbers from a piece of paper and dialing them in on a number-pad. If a phone has a keyboard today, it’s likely QWERTY, and bashing out numbers on a numerical keyboard isn’t fun.

This is no surprise to me. My communication priorities break down something like this: First, email, then IM, Twitter, text message and finally, if I am desperate or someone catches me out, I will actually talk to them. I never answer the landline at home because it is never a call for me.

This tumbling of voice on the cellphone networks is why the telcos are pushing so hard on selling data plans. More and more devices will be always-on, just like the Kindles, iPads and smart-phones of today. And just like in the distant beginnings of the cellphone market, the prices are starting high but are sure to drop. We can see a day, sooner than we might all think, when phones will not carry voice traffic at all. The few remaining person-to-person conversations will be piped over VoIP.

Cellphones Now Used More for Data Than for Calls [NYT]

Photo: Moriza/Flickr