Smart phone demand: An empirical study on the relationships between phone handset, Internet access and mobile services

• We explored smart phone demand by emphasizing differences between three dimensions.
• The three demand dimensions cover handset, mobile network and mobile services.
• We found demand for mobile services have weak relationship with handset and mobile network.
• We found significant effect of demographic variables on the demand for mobile network.

This study clearly identified the differences among different dimensions of users’ demand for mobile/smart phone; i.e., the smart phone handset, subscription of mobile network and usage of mobile services such as voice calls and SMS or some value added services such as GPS via the mobile Internet, and then examined the relationship between these three demand dimensions, and the effect of users’ demographic characteristics on the dimensions as well, by an empirical study in Taiwan. The results show that the usage of the mobile services are not significantly affected by how consumers choose smart phone handset, and how they subscribe to the mobile network. For the effect of users’ demographic characteristics, gender’s effect is observed, but is not as obvious as what have been pointed out in the literature. The most noticeable relationship is the effect of demographic variables on the attributes of mobile network. Specifically, users’ gender, age, occupation and income are found to have significant effects on the contract with voice and 3G Internet, and the monthly 3G Internet fee.