Lifestyle 'governs mobile choice'

BBC NEWS | Technology | Lifestyle 'governs mobile choice' - This article reports on a study done for Ericsson on ways to entice users to buy new handsets. Surprise, they found that lifestyle choices are better predictors of handset selection and purchase than the number of features a particular phone posesses. The feature bloat has gotten to the point where certain aspects of a phone appeal more or less to different types of populations. This idea of lifestyle is new for technology makers who have long operated on "build it and they will buy it and we will transform their lives" type of method. Awareness of the influence of lifestyle choices and the idea that technology doesn't "transform" human behavior per se, at least not immediately. In fact, technology must appeal to existing practices somehow augmenting them, and through this augmentation it eventually changes behavior patterns. This is an exciting change to see in industrial technology makers. It also smells of job prospects :)