US mobile phone subscribers are spending more on their mobile phones, according to a survey from JD Power and Associates.

Mobile phone subscribers are spending about $101, which is $9 more than they spent on handsets just six months ago. This is a large jump in the average sale price of mobile devices in two years, which JD Power thinks is due to an increase in sales of smartphones such as the iPhone and the BlackBerry.

Expensive smartphones make up about 6.3 per cent of all mobiles sold, while at the beginning of 2007 they made up only 1.7 per cent of the market. Because these phones cost more than normal phones, they push up the average value of phone sales.

The report said that mobile phone owners are keeping their gear longer. The average reported length of cell phone ownership is 17.7 months, up from 16.6 months in 2006.

Obviously if you spend a lot of cash on a device, you don’t see it as quite so disposable. X

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