The Rise Of The Cell Phone Accessory Industry

By Author: mark vince
Total Articles: 8
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With the recent boom in the handheld gadget industry, it should come as no surprise that adjacent industries have also shown an uptick in demand and sales. Whether you have the soon to become obsolete Iphone 4, the Iphone 5, Samsung Galaxy(ies) an Ipad Mini, you name it, sooner or later you are bound to accessorize it with a phone cover, a screen protector, a docking system or some kind of car thingie. The rules are simple within the industry: you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours. And when “the scratching” comes to be worth nearly 20 billion$ per year, then you know you have something working there.

A recent study into the smartphone accessory industry performed by ABI revealed that more than half of the 36billion$ income is generated by smartphones alone. Same study also concludes that the average smartphone owner spends around 56$ per device. With such high incomes, it comes as no surprise as how the smartphone accessories industry has become so lucrative.

And if 56$ per device seems a bit too much for some of our readers’ standards, let us make a small exercise of the mind. As you have recently bought ...
... a smartphone which you are extremely excited about, you might just as well buy a phone case since you can never be so sure. Prices range from the average 10$ case to the more fancy 20$ silicone covers. What comes next? Maybe a car charger which may just as well cost you an extra 10$. How about a docking system or a new pair of headphones? And so, you have easily reached the 56$ estimation.

If you think in retrospective, many of nowadays’ smartphone users are bound to have made use of a regular phone at some point in their life. Such types of basic phones, apart from the relatively short period in which they where “the hot” gadget of the market, have slowly but surely fallen into the category of commodity-type products. As a commodity-type product, it is easy to imagine how an individual will tend to spend less, if close to anything, on accessories that might either enhance its appearance or protection. The aforementioned study confirms this lack of spending with their estimation that the average phone user will spend roughly 28$ for his device.

On the other hand, a smartphone sits at the other side of the spectrum. A smartphone is a high class item and owners are most likely to try and expand the value of their handset. High quality headphones, docking systems, fancy silicone covers, screen protectors that might prolong the life of the smartphone, they are all value enhancing objects and the industry for them is expanding at an ever increasing rate.

Moreover, online stores have also picked up on this trend and smartphone deals that include a fancy, eye catching accessory to go along with the gadget have become common practice.

Whenever there will be something in such high demand as smartphones are nowadays, we are bound to see adjacent business spring up all around. The Cell Phone Accessory industry is no exception.