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Tough times call for tough actions.  It seems in light of all the economic bad news, lower income folks are ditching gadgets to have just one: the iPhone 3G.  Who needs two iPods?  Who needs a netbook?  Who needs a home phone line?

Indeed, one could argue the iPhone is just a tethering application away from ditching your home line, your broadband connection, your cable or satellite company, heck—even books are not able to escape all the niches Apple’s wonder child can get its hands on.  My thinking here is tethering would allow you to use your laptop/desktop via the iPhones 3G connection, so you can ditch the $25 per month + for broadband.

Cut costs and rationalize iPhone spending

According to the Wall Street Journal,

“We see that lower-income consumers are increasingly turning to mobile devices to access the Internet, to listen to music and for email,” said Mark Donovan, senior analyst at comScore. “

The numbers behind this blew me away:

Ownership of the iPhone rose 48% from June 1 to the end of August among households earning between $25,000 and $50,000 a year, compared to 21% overall, the study showed

Clearly, the iPhone hit the sweet spot in pricing.  But can it really shift consumer demand from broadband access?  The WSJ reported increases for these lower income households in web browsing and listening to music, but e-mail use lagged.  That could be explained by text messaging become more prevalent among younger users.

Last time I checked, 3 out of 5 Gadgetell editors owned iPhones.  Any of you guys think you could survive just on the iPhone for your home computing/music/entertainment needs if tethering were possible?

Source: [Wall Street Journal]