Firms Selling Apps for Simple Phones

Most consumers still do not use smartphones. According to data from the Nielsen Company, roughly 82 percent of cellphones in use are limited-function phones, the kind that typically sell for less than $50 or are given away with a two-year service contract. The cellphone industry prefers to call them feature phones, to distinguish them from smartphones like the Pre or the Droid, but they could just as well be called "kinda smartphones." Although once easily identified by boxy designs and minuscule, poorly pixelated screens, many feature phones these days more closely resemble their smarter cousins because software improvements enable them to run more sophisticated mobile applications.