KEY POINTS:
If you're carrying a Motorola mobile phone the chances are you are under 24 and fashion conscious.
But if you've got a Nokia in your pocket (or briefcase), it's a fair bet you might be a family-minded, middle-aged manager.
Sony Ericsson handsets are favoured by ambitious young men
trying to make their mark; LGs are tops with mums; while Samsungs are wielded by young women focused on their career, a study of mobile phone usage shows.
Nielsen Media Research associate director Jody Loughlin said according to research in undertaken in Australia all makes of mobiles had a wide spread of customer types but some groups were more attracted to certain brands than others.
"It's clear that many people choose a phone that says something about them," he said.
Sydneysider Dane Maddams, 21, of Concord, agrees that you can tell a lot about a person by their mobile phone.
"In this day and age what you wear defines who you are," Mr Maddams said.
"And mobile phones are an accessory of fashion."
Mr Maddams has a Sony Ericsson K800i and says he could be described as an ambitious young man trying to make his mark.
"I'm definitely not a middle-aged woman," he said, adding that if someone were to pull out a "crappy old brick of a Nokia" they would be harshly judged by his peers.
The fact that different "lifestyle groups" choose different mobiles was an important insight for the major telcos slugging it out in an increasingly competitive market, Mr Loughlin said.
"Customer satisfaction with mobile calls ... is much the same from one carrier to the next," he said.
"Against this background, the perceived image associated with different brands of handsets that telcos chose to bundle with their services may be far more important in winning market share than previously understood."
Mr Loughlin said that with Apple launching its mobile next year, the fashion fight over handsets was likely to heat up.
The survey also found that while Nokia still dominated the market, with 56.9 per cent of all handsets sold, it was under attack from its rivals.
Motorola lifted its market share to 12.2 per cent in the year to December 2006 (up 3.8 percentage points), while Sony Ericsson rose 2.4 points to 8.4 per cent and Samsung improved 1.7 points to six per cent.
Nokia's share of the pie plummeted 7.7 percentage points in the past year, the company's second consecutive year of losses.
LG had 7.1 per cent of the mobile market.
The survey was conducted by Panorama and released by Nielsen Media Research.
- AAP