The demand for advanced mobile phones that contain significant processing power, additional memory, large screens, and open operating systems has dominated the mobile handset market for the several years.
Smartphones will continue to lead the market into the foreseeable future. According to the latest market study by In-Stat, unit shipments of smartphones will reach nearly 850 million by 2015 -- as they approach the 1 billion shipment mark.
"There are several critical factors that drive smartphone success," says Allen Nogee, Principal Analyst. "These include a powerful browser, a wide variety of apps, an easy to navigate user interface, and a good keyboard or touch screen."
Additionally, other intangible smartphone attributes, such as being fashionable, and perhaps that your friends have one of the latest design devices, are important market drivers.
In-Stat's latest market study results include:
- More than half of U.S. handset shipments will be smartphones by 2012.
- Android is maintaining its momentum and will continue to be the leading OS.
- The demise of Symbian has been greatly overstated. On a global basis, annual unit shipments of Symbian-based handsets will continue to grow, resulting in Symbian having the second highest unit shipments of all the smartphone OS platforms.
- The smartphone OS war is heating up, as relatively new or renewed entrants such as MeeGo, Bada, WebOS, and others join a very crowded market.
- By 2015, over two thirds of smartphones will still be WCDMA-based. LTE smartphones will comprise only a small minority of annual handset shipments, even in 2015.
- The display and baseband/apps processor are the two high-cost items in the bill of materials. Other significant items include memory, camera, software and licensing, the device casing and manufacturing.
Smartphones will continue to lead the market into the foreseeable future. According to the latest market study by In-Stat, unit shipments of smartphones will reach nearly 850 million by 2015 -- as they approach the 1 billion shipment mark.
"There are several critical factors that drive smartphone success," says Allen Nogee, Principal Analyst. "These include a powerful browser, a wide variety of apps, an easy to navigate user interface, and a good keyboard or touch screen."
Additionally, other intangible smartphone attributes, such as being fashionable, and perhaps that your friends have one of the latest design devices, are important market drivers.
In-Stat's latest market study results include:
- More than half of U.S. handset shipments will be smartphones by 2012.
- Android is maintaining its momentum and will continue to be the leading OS.
- The demise of Symbian has been greatly overstated. On a global basis, annual unit shipments of Symbian-based handsets will continue to grow, resulting in Symbian having the second highest unit shipments of all the smartphone OS platforms.
- The smartphone OS war is heating up, as relatively new or renewed entrants such as MeeGo, Bada, WebOS, and others join a very crowded market.
- By 2015, over two thirds of smartphones will still be WCDMA-based. LTE smartphones will comprise only a small minority of annual handset shipments, even in 2015.
- The display and baseband/apps processor are the two high-cost items in the bill of materials. Other significant items include memory, camera, software and licensing, the device casing and manufacturing.