A Look At The Smartphone Market

By Author: Bonny Kominek
Total Articles: 50
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Almost 40 years ago, Motorola''s Martin Cooper was the first to use a hand-held phone. It weighed in at a hefty two kilos and looked like he was talking into a black brick. Fast-forward to 2010 and mobile phones easily slide into our back pockets and weigh just a few grams.

The biggest change is that mobile phones aren''t just phones that are mobile anymore. In the mid-1990s when mobile phone usage really took off on a mass scale, we didn''t know just how far our mobile phones would come.

All smartphones now have more power than desktop computers did back then. It''s a massive market that now stretches throughout the world, even penetrating developing nations. At the end of 2009, there were 4.5 billion mobile phone subscriptions making it one massive industry.

On the grand scale of mobile telecommunication, Smartphones are relatively new. In principal they were around back in 1992, but it wasn''t until the mid-2000s that they achieved commercial success and in the last 12-18 months sales have grown astronomically. Year-on-year sales of smartphones grew by 41% from 2008 to 2009. All the while sales of ''regular'' ...
... phones have declined.

But who can really be surprised by this shift? Where''s the fun in owning a phone that can''t access the Internet, can''t send emails, can''t download apps and basically can just call, take pictures and play music? When the alternative is to have a mini-computer in your hands, no one wants just a phone these days.

Like computers, smartphones run on their own unique operating systems. They offer super fast Internet access and you can customise your ''home'' screens just as you would with a desktop or laptop computer. You can even write essays on them if you need to.

By far the biggest share of this OS market is held by Nokia, 44%. This makes perfect sense because they are also the market dominator when it comes to mobile phone sales, pinching 40% of the market. However, RIM''s BlackBerry''s come in second with 19% and Apple''s OS is third at 10%. Newbe Android from Google has jumped to fourth place with 10%. Seeing as these three do not hold this share of overall phone sales, it proves that smartphones are definitely on the increase.

The big turn around for BlackBerry came when it decided to branch out of its business market comfort zone. To do so, it launched the touch screen favourite Storm 2 and the slim line and cool-looking Pearl 3G. The mobile phone market is highly volatile so it''s exciting to see what changes are on the way in the second half of 2010. Bonny Kominek is a writer with over 5 years experience in the communications technology market. They recommend Vodafone for the Blackberry Pearl handset.