Converged mobile devices, commonly known as smartphones, accounted for 18.8 percent of all mobile phones shipped in 1Q10, up slightly from 14.4 percent in 1Q09.
“2010 looks to be another year of large-scale consumer adoption of converged mobile devices,” said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team. “Consumers will gravitate to smartphones not just because the devices themselves look ‘cool’ and ‘slick,’ but because the overall experience aligns with their individual tastes and demands.”
Kevin Restivo, senior analyst with IDC’s Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker believes that higher smartphone sales this year will be a result of greater awareness, increasingly affordable data plans and the global economic recovery.
IDC data showed that Nokia firmly maintained its position as the leading smartphone vendor worldwide during 1Q10. In addition to introducing several new models — the C3, C6, and the E5 — Nokia announced its first Symbian^3 model, the N8. Research In Motion kept its position as the number two smartphone vendor worldwide on continued growth of its popular BlackBerry devices. Co-CEOs Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie recently unveiled the company’s new BlackBerry OS 6.0, which promises a smoother and more interactive user interface. Apple more than doubled its shipments from a year ago, with more iPhones being shipped outside its home territory of North America. A fourth generation iPhone is expected to arrive this summer. HTC and Motorola rounded out the top five smartphone vendors.
As more consumers purchase smartphones, business for “app stores” is booming. According to ABI Research, last year consumers downloaded some 2.4 billion applications from such online stores. The download rate will accelerate over the next few years until in 2013 smartphone downloads are expected to peak at just below seven billion. In the years that follow, smartphone download rates from app stores will start a slow decline
According to ABI’s senior analyst Mark Beccue, “App stores aren’t going away. Following the 2013 peak in demand, the number of downloads in 2015 will have decreased only seven or eight percent. But as our use of the mobile Internet evolves, demand will increasingly shift elsewhere.”
Beccue noted that the mobile Web is becoming more sophisticated and increasing numbers of subscribers will start to use the functionality on mobile websites themselves, rather than dedicated apps. “We see two emerging trends,” he explained. “First, many applications built on web standards, will migrate from app stores to regular websites, and for some sites you won’t need an app at all. In addition, more and more popular applications will be preloaded on mobile devices. Social networking apps in particular will be pre-loaded on new products.”
If you are in the market for a new smartphone, then consider the Nokia N8. As IDC already pointed out, the Nokia N8 will be powered by Symbian ^3, the latest edition of the world’s most used smartphone software. Symbian ^3 introduces several major advances, including support for gestures such as multi touch, flick scrolling and pinch-zoom. The Nokia N8 offers multiple, personalized homescreens, which can be loaded with apps and widgets. Symbian^3 also raises the bar in performance by delivering greater memory management allowing more applications to run in parallel for a faster multi-tasking experience.
The Nokia N8 introduces a 12 megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss optics, Xenon flash and a large sensor that rivals those found in compact digital cameras. Additionally, the Nokia N8 has the ability to make HD-quality videos and edit them with an intuitive built-in editing suite. Doubling as a portable entertainment center, people can enjoy HD quality video with Dolby Digital Plus surround sound by plugging the N8 into their home theater system. The Nokia N8 enables access to Web TV services that deliver programs, news and entertainment and additional local Web TV content is also available from the Ovi Store. The Nokia N8 will come with free global Ovi Maps walk and drive navigation, guiding people to places and points of interest in more than 70 countries worldwide — including Saudi Arabia.
Sounds like an awesome converged mobile device, but whether it’s a winner or not won’t be clear until the Nokia N8 becomes available in the third quarter of this year. It’s estimated to retail for SR1,800.
