As I wrote following the launch of Google's Nexus One phone and its online retail store, Google will be an influential retailer, but isn't today because what they offer isn't different from what's available from carriers or merchants like Best Buy or Amazon — it's only differentiated by its exclusive on a hot device.

Most people who buy phones today want to feel the heft of the device, play with its UI, get a sense of the experience of using it since they're making a long term commitment to it. As a result, most phones are sold at operators' retail outlets or at physical retailers. During the launch event I asked Google's Andy Rubin, the driving force behind Android, whether they felt that they may in the future need to expand to include physical retail (such as a carrier partner's stores). He said no, that consumers are increasingly going to buy their phones online just like they buy digital cameras. He is likely correct, but (again, as I wrote) that time is well into the future.

What wasn't explicit in my question, and which the initial flurry of Nexus One sales experiences has exposed, is the stark reality that being in the retail phone business involves a lot more than the sale itself. Today the news is full of stories of Nexus One owners frustrated at their inability to get access to a human being to help resolve problems or answer questions related to their new phone. (It hasn't helped that the device itself appears to have some problems accessing T-Mobile's 3G network, and that buyers may not have checked the presence of 3G coverage where they live and/or work.)

What lessons should we draw from this?

We've just gotten data back from our most recent US Omnibus Survey, fielded in October and November of 2009, and it provides a snapshot of the US mobile phone market pretty darn close to the end of 2009. Before examining the data, it's important to note that the term smartphone, while widely used, doesn't benefit from a uniform, industry-wide definition.

Way back in 2001 we said that "Location Based Services" is something of a misnomer. Why? Because while there are powerful applications that are uniquely enabled by the availability of automatic, high-precision location information, their number is small. In contrast, there are orders of magnitude more applications whose value increases meaningfully when automatic location information is available — "Location Enhanced Services" is a more accurate term.

After much hard toil in the form of data cutting, analysis, and head scratching, my colleague Jacqueline Rousseau-Anderson and I have finished the 2009 Forrester U.S. Benchmark Data Overview and the report is now live — if you’re a Forrester client you can access the document at http://www.forrester.com/go?docid=54959.

If you’re not familiar with our Benchmark report, you’ve been missing out. Forrester has the longest running survey of technology adoption in North America, more than a decade’s worth of data that tells a detailed, complete story of the technologies that consumers use, their online and offline behaviors, their demographics and attitudes. Our mail-based survey was completed by nearly fifty thousand respondents this year, and the data is representative of the US and Canadian populations at both a household and individual level. In past years we’ve reported on North America as a whole but this year opted to produce separate reports for the US and Canada — it’s the US data that we’ve just published (those of you anxious for an update on the Great White North will have to wait a bit as we put the finishing touches on the Canadian Benchmark).