Smartphones: what's hot, what's not

Peter Dinham
Wednesday, 05 August 2009 07:07

Business IT - Technology

Consumers have a smorgasbord of new smartphones and varying applications, functions and services to choose from as the market for the phones continues to grow despite an overall decline in the total mobile phone market.

With manufacturers releasing in the order of 77 new smartphone models on the market in the past 12 months, the competition for the consumer dollar has well and truly hotted up with offerings of more and more applications and services across all smartphones. 

In its latest tracker report, Ovum says that of the 77 smartphones released, 59 of the handsets had GPS capability and 49 had WiFI as they responded to growing consumer demand for these services.

Ovum analyst, Tim Renowden, says this indicates these technologies are now key features across nearly all smartphones, not just high-end models, despite some operators’ reluctance to admit WiFi-equipped handsets onto their networks. 
 
According to Renowden, despite the reluctance of some operators to offer the service, Ovum believes consumers now expect WiFi to be present in smartphones.

In the smartphone market generally, Ovum forecasts that smartphone shipments will have grown by 23% between last year and 2009, despite the overall decline during that period in the total mobile phone market.

That level of growth is forecast by Ovum to continue at a CAGR of 19.5% through to 2014, at which point the research firm says smartphones will account for 29% of the total global handset market.

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