Are smartphones more precious than wallets?
An interesting piece of research done by YouGov has shown that nearly a third of smartphone users in the UK think it would be worse to lose their mobile phone than their wallet. In this research 30% of participants said that they would rather lose their wallet than their smartphone. This shows how highly smartphones are regarded, as well as how valuable they are to some people, so are we now in a world where smartphones are more precious than wallets? Particularly when you consider the personal information stored on the device.
With the value of smartphones ranging from under £100 to the very expensive at over £400, depending on how much money is in your wallet, you can see why some feel their smartphone is worth a lot more money.
The research also interestingly showed that the younger users of smartphones in particular valued their handsets more than their wallets. The figures show that 42% of 16 – 24 year olds and 34% of 25 – 34 year olds were more concerned about their smartphone. This is a large percent, especially if you compare it to 45 – 54 year olds where only 19% cared more about their handset than their wallet. This is understandable as most young people do use their smartphone for lots of things, including going on social networks, taking photos, and even making payments. But just in general, people store lots of information on their phones like personal details, bank details, contacts and passwords. So it’s understandable that people see their phones as valuable.
Google has already introduced its own mobile payments service called Google Wallet that can be used by Android users. This is known as mobile or ‘contactless’ payments and is likely to become popular as it takes the worry out of having to remember your wallet or credit card wherever you go. Known as Near Field Communication (NFC), it allows data to be exchanged wirelessly between a reader and a target. In this case it would be between a smartphone and a reader or chip.
Although this is very convenient as it allows mobile payments to be made, it does raise a lot of security issues. If a mobile phone can make a payment by being swiped, then if the phone is stolen it means that anyone can use the phone for payments. This will mean that both mobile phones and bank accounts could be targeted by thieves at the same time. Security of mobile phones will have to be raised by the manufacturers of these mobile phone payments companies, as they will have to think about introducing security measures to protect their customers.
In a world where smartphones are more precious than wallets, who knows what the future holds for new developments of smartphones. As the YouGov research shows, people can live without their wallets more than they can live without their smartphones and although many people wouldn’t be surprised by this, it actually shows how much smartphones have developed to offer users so much convenience from one device, with thousands of Apps that allow you to do almost anything from your smartphone. In the future, people’s increased reliance on mobile phones will definitely mean that more and more people will value their smartphone more than their wallets.