The Stats

The current state of smart phones has begun to rise in market share and soon will take over as the dominate mobile device in the market across the world. 24% of phones to day are smart phones with an increase of 13% in 2009. All of this done while the world market for mobile phones decreased by 3% in the same year. Emerging markets as china will account to a large amount of smart phones that will be sold.

Research and Markets: 2010 North American Consumer Mobile Communications Outlook. (12 July). M2 Presswire,***[insert pages]***. Retrieved October 5, 2010, from ProQuest Computing. (Document ID: 2077982861).

Brief overview of the smartphone

The Shift in technology and life style (video)

smartphones the begining

Too understand the impact and the future of smart phone we first have to look back at the history and inception.  The very first smart phone was created by IBM called the Simon and combined the use of PDA features with a phone on a touch screen without physical buttons.  The next player into the smart phone market was Nokia with their 9000 series smart phone.  These phones included a calendar, notes, clock, messaging, and web access and fax capabilities.  The problem with smart phones of the time was that they were very expensive, big, with short battery life.  This would limit the appeal to consumers to the enterprise users.  This was not a real success due in part to it’s cost of 900 dollars and limited battery life.  Real success didn’t come till around 2002 when the Sony, Palm, RIM and Windows mobile entered in to the market.

            The entry to this market by windows, RIM, palm and Sony marked a surge in innovation and demand for these type of phones.  In 2002 these phones coming to market were smaller, lighter, and had longer battery life.  The major users were still enterprise users but slowly regular consumer demand began to grow.  Easier interface and portability made it much more appealing

to the average consumer.  On the enterprise side emerged a giant in the market, RIM.  In 2002 they released the first blackberry which focused on push messaging which it is best known for.  One of the reasons that RIM is so popular in the enterprise market is the slew of security protocols that they employ in their phone. This made it extremely popular with companies with sensitive data

            Companies such as Palm, Windows and Sony created user friendly phone for consumers.  Palm started off with creating PDAs and held the majority market share in handhelds.  It makes sense for them to venture into the smart phone market.  Its first major success was the Palm Treo 600 which became an all one handheld device including multimedia.  Windows soon came into market with Pocket PC for smart phone which gave smart phones maker a platform to work from.

            Smart phones in the early part of 2000 marked a major innovation in features and user interface but still did not make a major consumer success.  This did not come till Apple release the iPhone in 2007.  The iPhone was a large leap in innovation for the market mainly due to its use of a multi touch interface, easy and simple to use OS and all in one functionality.  The device also had an appealing form factor being thin with one of the largest screens for it’s time.  Along with all of this, price was also a major factor with this.  A full feature smart phone at the time would easily cost close to a thousand dollars were as apple price their phone from 400 to 500 dollars depending on capacity.  This began the rapid growth in the smart phone market with entry of Google’s OS and many companies pushing their new devices.

Smart Phone A Revolution in Technology

This decade has been marked by the extensive progress in mobile connectivity.  Smaller laptops and wireless broadband cards, text messaging, and email the decade this decade has been all about being connected with the world.  The Smartphone world has been the front runner in this space and has advanced tremendously, especially in the last half of the decade.  20 percent of all mobile phones sold are now smart phones and their market share is getting bigger and bigger with 45.5 million users and counting.  What we see is a termendous advancement in the market   Taking a look at these phones we can see the history, advantages, disadvantages and what lies in the future for smart phones.


Research and Markets: 2010 North American Consumer Mobile Communications Outlook. (12 July). M2 Presswire,***[insert pages]***. Retrieved October 5, 2010, from ProQuest Computing. (Document ID: 2077982861).