Tipping Point In US Mobile Phone Usage.

This does not really surprise me seeing as how many feature rich mobile phones and smartphones are out there, but 2009 marked the first year where data usage surpassed voice data usage on cellular networks in the US. I was admittedly late to the game when it comes to smartphones and even text messaging for that matter, but over the last 12 months I've gradually replaced much of the time I would have normally spent in front of my PC with time spent tapping away at my HTC's tiny keyboard. 

Still, even the telephone design industry has taken note. Ross Rubin, a telecommunications analyst with the NPD Group, said cellphones outfitted with numerical keyboards — easiest for quickly dialing a phone number — were no longer in vogue. Touch screens, or quick messaging devices with full “qwerty” keyboards, on the other hand, are. On the newest phones, users must press several buttons or swipe through several screens to get to the application that allows them to make calls."

“Handset design has become far less cheek-friendly,” Mr. Rubin said. Mr. Hesse of Sprint said he expected that within the next couple of years, cellphone users would be charged by the data they used, not by their voice minutes, a prediction echoed by other industry executives.

 More info at the NYTimes