The Motorola DynaTAC, the first mobile telephone, weighed 2 pounds, sold for $3,995 and offered just a half-hour of talk time in 1983. Today, cellphones are used by 5 billion people and are morphing into inexpensive computers.
Research2Guidance estimates that smartphone users will increase globally from about 100 million last year to 970 million by the end of 2013.
Prices are expected to plunge as everyone starts making Smartphones, says Nikkei Electronics. Smartphones only accounted for about 14% of the world mobile phone market in 2009. Gartner expects smartphones to penetrate about 38% of the global market in 2013.
Mobile phone carriers around the world are interested in smartphones because they are an effective way to get users to make the transition over to 3G/4G data services.
Google’s aim is to make Android the de facto standard in the industry by providing it free of charge, thereby creating an environment when many firms can develop handsets and components. The Open Handset Alliance, for example, counts semiconductor manufacturers and software vendors among its membership, all working on supporting Android in their own products.
MeeGo combines Nokia’s Maemo project and Intel’s Moblin, creating a single open source OS that supports both ARM and x86 processors. As a result it has become possible to assemble multi-function smartphones, tablets and netbooks from off-the-shelf components and “free”, open-source software.
Next to come: Commodity prices. In the not-so-distant future, manufacturers will offer ultra-low prices, says Nikkei Electronics. Google’s Android strategy, in fact, turns everything except Web services into commodities. If smartphone components and handsets become commodities, almost all the handsets in the world will turn into smartphones.
How good is the total user experience? Companies that do it best will emerge as world leaders, concludes Nikkei Electronics.
