Analysis of factors affecting the adoption of smartphones

The mobile-phone market has changed from a new purchase market to a replacement market when it is matured. At the same time smartphones come into the spotlight as an alternative of feature phones in the mobile-phone market. Since the characteristics of 'smartphones' are greatly different from those of 'feature phones' in that more technologies are incorporated and more functionalities are provided with users by smartphones, factors that can affect the adoption of smartphones and feature phones might not be the same. With all the importance of market change from feature phones to smartphones, most of the previous research on smartphones has been conducted on the assumption that smartphone is used as a specialized tool for a particular purpose, such as smartphones for logistics or smartphones for medical use. However, more and more consumers adopt smartphones as a tool for general use in their everyday life, it is worth emphasizing more on general consumers, which regard smartphone as a next-generation product of feature phone. And so this study purposes to investigate factors affecting the adoption of smartphones, focusing on general consumers. To achieve the purpose, we adopted TAM (Technology Acceptance Model), which is one of the most popular methods to analyze the acceptability of new technology, and used SEM (Structural Equation Model) for an empirical analysis. Our empirical analysis through the online and offline survey shows that two types of users perceived differently for functional attributes on smartphones. The research results is expected to understand the characteristics of potential market for smart phones and ultimately support diffusion of smartphones, design of new product, and the development of marketing strategy in the mobile phone market.