Mr. Peir, 32, works in New York as a product manager for the cellphone marketing research unit of the Nielsen Company.
So retailers are trying to figure out how to appeal to a shopper who may use a cellphone to research products, a tablet to browse the options and a computer to buy.
"Fashion and thinness have become an overriding concern," says Avi Greengart, cellphone analyst for research firm Current Analysis.
How does our existing use of cellphones inform the research process and cellphilm aesthetics?
From June to August, only 9.8% of mobile subscribers tried to access e-mail via their cellphones, according to research firm M Metrics.
Mobile TV hasn't taken off yet: Only about 1.3% of U.S. subscribers currently watch video on their cellphones, according to research company M Metrics.
Earlier this month, Ms. Lokshina said, she received threatening messages on her cellphone after planning a research trip to Dagestan, another of Russia's seven predominantly Muslim regions in the North Caucasus.
Another household object that functions similarly, Mr. Harvey has learned through his research into cellphone data transmission, is a stainless steel martini shaker.
"We liken it to an elephant cellphone," said Joseph Soltis, a research scientist who works with elephants at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida.
She moved in 2007, after her life was made unbearable by a new cellphone mast at the research farm in Cedar Falls, Iowa, that she shared with her husband, Bert, and their son.
