The trends and adoption behaviors of smart phones in Taiwan: A comparison between persons over 45 years of age and youth under 25

With the characteristics of neat and lightweight design, and the unlimited capabilities for sharing information, the mobile multimedia internet device (MMID) is technologically taking the world by storm. By using the smart phone as an example, this research examined ways in which innovation and generational factors affect the consumption and usage by middle-aged and younger cohorts. The middle-aged, defined here as those above 45 years of age, fall within the generation of those growing up under the politics of concentration of authority who, in their youth, had access to only a few controlled traditional media. In contrast to this middle-aged generation, the younger generation, those born after 1987, the year of the beginning of democracy in Taiwan, grew up in a democratic society and are familiar with all kinds of new media and technologies. In this research, the researchers interviewed consumers of smart phones from both the mature and the younger cohorts to compare their different consumption, usage and opinions regarding smart phones and the application. This application paper seeks to find the different consumption motivations, usage habits of both hardware and software, as well as preference of attributes and brands of smart phones between consumers from the middle and the younger generations.