If you think Bluetooth is a rare dental condition and an app is what you eat before the entree, you might not be a candidate for today’s high-tech, whiz-bang smart phones. Instead, you might be happier with a mobile phone geared toward seniors.
Those phones typically don’t have Web-surfing capability, GPS maps and video games but instead have large buttons, oversized digital readouts and hearing-aid compatibility, along with a relatively simple calling plan.
Though senior-friendly phones aren’t new, their lower prices and variety are. A recent price skirmish among wireless companies means seniors can get an easy-to-use cell phone and cheap service to go with it, said Mac Haddow, senior fellow on public policy for the independent and nonprofit Alliance for Generational Equity.
Telecommunications analyst Roger Entner of Recon Analytics called senior citizens “the last untapped segment” of wireless customers.
Though about 90 percent of Americans ages 18 to 49 own cell phones, only 57 percent of seniors 65 and older have them, according to the Pew Research Center. And fewer than one-fourth of wireless phones are purchased by adults 55 and older, according to the latest numbers by market research firm NPD Group.
Heightened interest recently among wireless phone companies to sell to seniors has meant more offerings and lower prices, Entner said.
Seniors can get a simple cell phone for about $15, with service as low as about $7 a month, according to an analysis by Alliance for Generational Equity’s Senior Advocate Health & Safety Project. The group said it conducted the analysis because price is often cited as a reason an estimated 13 million to 19 million U.S. seniors don’t own cell phones, said David Herman, spokesman for the Alliance for Generational Equity.
“We’re in an environment where a lot of senior citizens are having to decide between rent and medicine or medicine and…