Smartphones - The murky competition intensifies
By Binu Paul, SiliconIndia   |   Tuesday, 12 October 2010, 15:00 IST   |    1 Comments
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Bangalore: From Simon, the first smartphone designed by IBM in 1992 to the much awaited Windows Phone 7 which is due to launch this month, the smartphone industry has gone through a world of changes. The industry experts predict that the year 2013 will see smartphones acquiring over 25 percent of the mobile phone market. The intense competition results fast-paced development and creative innovations which ultimately leaves the consumers with a variety of options. The beginning of 2000 drafts a new chapter in the history of smartphones. The coming years witnessed an influx of vendors to the industry. In 2000 Ericsson released the touchscreen smartphone R380, which was the first device on the Symbian OS platform. The following version P800 introduced the first camera smartphone. Features started to get the most attention with Handspring releasing the Palm OS Treo smartphone, utilizing a full keyboard that combined wireless web browsing, email, calendar, and contact organizer with mobile third-party applications that could be downloaded or synced with a computer. Arrival of Microsoft Windows Powered Smartphones further intensified the competition in 2002 and in the same year, RIM released its first BlackBerry, the first smartphone optimized for wireless email use. Nokia N95 gave a new meaning to the competition which introduced GPS, a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash, 3G and wi-fi connectivity and TV-out which become standard on high-end smartphones in the following years. Later in 2007, Apple released its first iPhone with multi-touch interface and a web browser standing tall in quality than others. Seeking a resurgence in the smartphone market, Nokia introduced N8, the first device to use the new Symbian^3 OS recently. In 2008, Google's Android, a cross platform OS for smartphones, created a new wave in the smartphone industry. The coming years saw many prominent players such HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Samsung developing smartphones on the Android platform. The biggest selling operating system for smartphones is Symbian OS. The close rivals to Symbian in smartphone market are Android, Blackberry OS, iOS and Windows Mobile. The ultra-competitive smartphone market sees new vendors coming up each time. While Samsung and LG are looking to increase their sales numbers, new players in the market like Huawei and Dell are planning to strengthen their presence. Motorola, Sony Ericsson and HTC are trying hard to increase their customer base to set new targets while Nokia, which is on its way to recovery, hopes to stay ahead of Apple and RIM. The huge success of Apple's App Store which by April 2010 hosted more than 185,000 applications made other companies to launch their own app stores. The App Store hit three billion application downloads in early January 2010. RIM launched its app store, BlackBerry App World in April 2009. Nokia introduced its Ovi Store in May 2009. Palm launched its Palm App Catalog in June 2009. Microsoft launched its Windows Marketplace for Mobile in October 2009. The competition has taken an ugly turn at times with Apple suing HTC or Microsoft suing Motorola over patent issues. There were many other cases such as Nokia's latest suit against Apple's iPad and iPhone 3G or NTP's suit against Apple, Google, Motorola, Microsoft and HTC over smartphone email. The much anticipated arrival of Windows Phone 7 will heat up the war in the smartphone industry further. To be the front runners in the industry, the archrivals will constantly intensify their technologies and advance their features. The next leader in the smartphone industry will be the one who is best at keeping its existing consumers and attracting the unexplored markets.