Despite current economic conditions, about one third of American cell phone subscribers, over the age of 18, plan to purchase a new handset within the next 12 months.

One of the strongest drivers for phone upgrades is the desire for advanced functionality, the study notes. Nearly one in five current subscribers, or 18 percent, intend to upgrade their service package to include wireless data applications. This is up from 11 percent a year ago.

According to Mick Mullagh, president and CEO of Telephia, there is no typical wireless customer — "different key customer segments want new phones to perform a growing array of functions."

He says industry players need to "better understand which advanced features will drive upgrades among which groups of users, and examine closely the other major drivers of handset upgrades."

• Data book applications, 80 percent
• Voice recognition, 74 percent
• SMS, 67 percent
• Alarm clock functionality, 66 percent
• Downloadable ring tones, 65 percent

The least desirable services, which participants identified, include camera capabilities, photo viewing and multimedia functions, PDA functionality, music listening capabilities, and the ability to share information via an infrared port.

MobileInfo Advisory & Comments: We find fault with Telephia’s language about the conclusions of this study. More appropriate wording would be " young subscribers are willing to upgrade but reluctantly". From consumer’s point of view, the handset industry is changing products at too rapid a rate, causing unnecessary product obsolescence. We suggest that handset manufacturers should learn from Microsoft’s strategy – let subscribers keep the handset just like they keep the PC hardware, change the operating and application software, then upgrade the PC when functionality they want does not match the horse power of the PC.

It is technologically possible to build a handset that will have a longer life than current set of products. We do hope that Motorola’s new design strategy that allows service providers to design their own version of the handset will help. But we are not extremely hopeful. You will be forced to discard your handsets several times during the next five years.