Results of the Age Ranges & Uses Comminity Poll

Between April 2005 and February 2006, HPC:Factor ran a community poll here on the home page of the site, asking you to provide us with a little information on your usage habits.

We asked you to tell us your age range, and what your primary use for you Handheld PC was. The information was collected to provide to developers to help them better target applications, and now we are pleased to announce that the results have been compiled, simplified and are ready to view.

Over all, we had 1252 respondees to the survey, making it the largest community statistical analysis conducted on the community for quite some time.

Poll Duration: 274 days (8 months, 29 days)
Poll Results (Valid): 1252
Poll Results (Void): 0

A Graph of the results is attached to this post.

Age Ranges
-14: 46
15-20: 203
21-25: 220
26-30: 146
31-35: 159
36-40: 153
41+: 325

Average Device Uses
Video/Music: 70
Entertainment: 62
Gadget: 171
Schoolwork: 170
Reading: 100
Mobile Internet/Email: 323
PDA / PIM: 356

<14 Uses
Video/Music: 4
Entertainment: 7
Gadget: 8
Schoolwork: 8
Reading: 2
Mobile Internet/Email: 12
PDA / PIM: 5

15-20 Uses
Video/Music: 27
Entertainment: 26
Gadget: 23
Schoolwork: 59
Reading: 7
Mobile Internet/Email: 39
PDA / PIM: 22

21-25 Uses
Video/Music: 10
Entertainment: 7
Gadget: 33
Schoolwork: 58
Reading: 25
Mobile Internet/Email: 45
PDA / PIM: 42

26-30 Uses
Video/Music: 11
Entertainment: 9
Gadget: 28
Schoolwork: 17
Reading: 8
Mobile Internet/Email: 38
PDA / PIM: 35

31-35 Uses
Video/Music: 4
Entertainment: 3
Gadget: 28
Schoolwork: 12
Reading: 18
Mobile Internet/Email: 52
PDA / PIM: 42

36-40 Uses
Video/Music: 8
Entertainment: 2
Gadget: 21
Schoolwork: 1
Reading: 16
Mobile Internet/Email: 37
PDA / PIM: 68

41> Uses
Video/Music: 6
Entertainment: 8
Gadget: 30
Schoolwork: 15
Reading: 24
Mobile Internet/Email: 100
PDA / PIM: 142

interesting results, seems like most people use their devices for PIM and mobile internet/email, even <14 users.
Also is interesting to note that the strongest preference for school work is between 15 and 25 and that reading is prefered by >41 people as well as people in the 21-26 group
It's also surprinsing to see that most groups doesn't use the device for entertainment purposes.

YES! Finally the 41+ rule at something

I think the results are not surprising. Quite close to my expectations really.

Internet/email is certainly the hot topic. I have tried time and again to explain to other PDA users how much better HPCs are for both (wide screen for browsing, keyboard for emailing).

Well it's obvious that college students fall into the 15-25 group.

Reading is something you like to do in your 20's, give up in your 30's, and finally pick up again in your 40's.

Entertainment or Video/Muisc is certainly not a strong area for HPCs. Sure the screen is larger than other PDAs, but most HPCs (by units, not by models) have DSTN screens. That basically seals the deal.

Edited by takwu 2006-02-25 1:42 PM

Very interesting results, I personally was hoping for a different outcome (more video/multimedia ofcourse) but the results sure are handy to get an idea of whats going on in the HPC world.
Now all we need is the used apps that hook onto these results.

Thanks C:AMIE

I pretty much expected the results as they came. I do however think that there is some temporal interpreation to be made with them. If we broke the data down further to see what happened on a monthly basis, I think that we will see a gradual increase in the multimedia usage habits of users. Multimedia has slowly become a more acceptable medium on the H/PC... 12 months ago well, no one did it really. Now look. There are threads on the boards and frequent questions being asked about getting media to work.

This is in large part due to TCPMP, and PocketDVD/DVDcatalyst's exposure.

Thank-you for suggesting it. This information is useful for the whole community, both for developers and for us in the webmaster side of the community so that we know what you guys are looking for. So please do participate in the polls that we run both on the home page and here on the forums.

If there are developers out there who are looking for answers to a particular question, please get in contact and we will try and get you some answers.

In the mean time, I just want to extend my thanks to everyone who took part in the poll being discussed here.

The results from the poll is very interesting and also explains in part why handhelds struggle to replace notebooks. We had a discussion in the forum last year, were somebody suggested to equipped PDA's and HPC's with multiple card slots that allow modular expansion of software and memory. Surely these results confirm the diversity of use people would like to have. And if developers would develop a platform with modular card expansion, where software could be loaded as and when required with a card, the popularity of these devices would improve greatly.


PS. I like the new layout of the website. Its great!!!!!!

noooooo

I agree on the long-winded nature of the idea. I think that to some extent the new generation of pure Flash based CE devices go much of the way to realising this. It just takes installer technology to perform a reconfiguration.