Dumbphones: Once upon a time, they were the mobile phones par excellence, without too much competition. Today, the so-called “feature phones” are considered objects for the unfamiliar with technology, elderly parents or grandparents, who, at best, need to take fleeting photos or write a few messages on social media. But no. At the end of August, Counterpoint Research analysts reversed the situation. According to the analysis contained in the report “Millennials Advocate Digital Detox” (Millennials support digital detoxification), in the US, the “dumbphone” market will reach 2.8 million units sold in 2023, equal to about 3% of the entire mobile industry. Suppose we add to these numbers that the smartphone segment will lose 6% again in the current year. In that case, the indication that some consumers are deciding to switch to less intelligent but perhaps more functional devices is more than an isolated indication.

A way to detox – dumbphones

Suppose Gen Z and Millennials use feature phones to try to detox from the omnipresence of social networks and the internet. In that case, it is also paradoxical how this trend has become a hashtag on TikTok, the quintessential youth social network, with #bringbackfliphones. A little nostalgia for the features of models that seem light years away from the iPhone but also a comeback for the brands that have made the history of telephony. Nokia, for example, has been focusing on the memory effect for years, thanks to the reinterpretation of its milestones in a slightly more modern key.

Not surprisingly, Counterpoint Research states that Hmd Global, the company that owns the Nokia brand, has come to hold a 26% feature phone market share, second only to Tcl, which holds 43%. The rest? In the hands of small producers, such as Sonim, who have agreements with telephone operators to offer convenient packages, almost always based on voice, text messages and little data, given the essentiality of the object and the minimal use it makes of the internet.

Optimizing the time

The discussion is broader and involves all those companies that, by new policy, want to reduce the costs of their products. Old phones are also an interesting option for tourists who can buy one for travel, for a few euros, or for those who live in developing countries where the connection is slow or unstable. Digitization is everywhere, but there is another intrinsic reason for the decline of smartphones and the recovery of less intelligent, i.e. less connected, mobile phones: omnipresent digitalization.
Computers, wearables, cars – virtually every device we touch connects to the network.

To detoxify from a world that is perpetually connected to something means optimizing the tools we adopt to avoid a sort of burnout due to an excess of technology, where the management of similar tools becomes more complex than the use of the tools themselves.

Having WhatsApp installed on your smartwatch, connected to your home or office Wi-Fi, is already a good way to check your mobile screen less, shifting your attention to an object that almost all of us have on our wrists: the watch. It goes without saying that the hours spent on the computer are already full of social media, video use and photo scrolling, activities that relegate the smartphone to the back of the desk.

It is true that phone calls remain, which could be short-lived in a world made up of chats and calls, in themselves operations that a feature phone can perform without major problems. Simplifying only sometimes means compromising.