Cellphone keypads: Goodbye 1-2-3, hello A-B-C

At North America's largest cell phone trade show, CTIA Wireless 2009, held last week in Las Vegas, there were few new phones for the market that had a numerical keypad instead of an alphabetic keyboard. Touchscreens also were out in force.

These changes are a recognition of the popularity of text messaging and wireless Internet use. Industry organisation CTIA Wireless, which hosts the show, said US subscribers sent 1 trillion text messages last year, three times the 2007 volume. Meanwhile, the same people used 2,2 trillion minutes of voice calls, an increase of less than 5%.

This shift in how people use their mobile devices has overturned cell phone design. According to NPD Group, 31% of phones sold in US stores in the fourth quarter of 2008 had full-alphabet keyboards, up from 5% two years earlier.

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