iPhone and Android to give customers freedom from carriers: analyst

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 16 July 2008 04:44

Your IT - Mobility

A move away from the current telco-centric approach to mobile applications - as seen with the iPhone - makes life much easier for developers. After all, Apple's App Store launched with over 800 programs, mostly from third-party developers.

In-Stat is also tipping Android to kick-start the location-aware advertising business, but it also expects Google to hedge its bets by working on location-aware search for the iPhone and other handsets.

And the arrival of new "iconic" phones - including the iPhone 3G and forthcoming BlackBerry models - is expected to bring a strong second half for the industry despite general economic gloom, according to ABI Research.

"2008 should still be a very good year for the global mobile phone market. While Q2 performance figures are still preliminary until finalized at the end of July, early indications do not point to an aggressively weak quarter," said research director Kevin Burden.

"Historically, the second half of the year has always outperformed the first, and despite nearly global economic problems, a second half lift is still expected, although likely lower than the near 20% increase the worldwide market has seen in recent years."

Burden believes that making it easier to use existing features is more important than adding new technologies. (Yep, that's the iPhone again.)

"The trend now is about making better use of what we have rather than introducing a flood of new services and network features. That's going to go a long way towards ensuring users' acceptance of new phones and new applications," he said.

Increased standardisation of operating systems (think Symbian and Android) in lower-end phones will help with usability issues are well as providing a wider installed base for applications.