Smart Phone Market Growing More Crowded
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The smart phone market will grow more crowded Wednesday with the debut of two devices directed at opposite ends of the customer spectrum: a BlackBerry for consumers with a newfangled
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Research In Motion    has leapt into the retail consumer market with products such as  its pink BlackBerry Pearl, a candybar-shaped e-mail phone  stuffed with multimedia goodies, exposing itself to shoppers'  fickle tastes and competition from Apple Inc's  iPhone.
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(InfoWorld) - Handheld PC vendors sold four times as many smartphones as PDAs (personal digital assistants) in the second half of 2006, and Nokia Corp. continued to distance itself from competitors. Nokia owns 42 percent of the combined PDA and smartphone market, compared to single-digit market share for Research in Motion Ltd. (RIM), Motorola Inc. and Palm Inc., according to a study released Thursday by Gartner Inc. Worldwide, that market reached 42.1 million units, a 57 percent rise from the same period last year. Most of the growth was driven by sales of smartphones, which rose 75.5 percent to 34.7 million units. In contrast, PDAs grew very slowly, climbing only 5.7 percent to 7.4 million units. Nokia could add to its lead in the second half of 2006 as it launches new models of smartphones, said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst for Gartner. Among the smaller vendors, Motorola doubled its sales of smartphones, thanks to the popularity of its Linux-based units in Chinese markets. But RIM is set to post stronger future growth with its Pearl device, as demand for mobile e-mail spreads beyond executive users, Gartner said. At the bottom of the pile, Palm saw its sales sink 26 percent, leaving it with only 5 percent of the combined worldwide market for PDAs and smartphones. In fact, the company has launched no new PDA models to date in 2006. PDAs aren't dead yet -- they outsold smartphones in North America in the first half of 2006. But smartphones ruled in every other region, including an enormous 33 percent worldwide share sold in Japan alone. To continue this hot pace of growth, vendors must convince buyers that new smartphones offer more benefits than less-expensive enhanced cell phones, Cozza said. To make that case, they will launch new products with advanced features and rich multimedia functions, she said. If they succeed, smartphone shipments could reach 81 million by the end of the year. Â
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With more than 400 million mobile device subscribers, the fast-growing China market is an attractive one for RIM.
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Shipments of cell phones compatible with Japan's mobile digital TV service have surged to more than 20 million units in fewer than two years since launch, according to industry data released Wednesday.
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Although mobile phones have long been a part of the business community, they are quietly becoming entrenched in personal lives.
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InfoWorld - A little-known search engine has optimized its offering for mobile devices, joining an increasingly crowded market of services targeting cell phone users.
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Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c58791)  has announced the addition of The Wi-Fi Chipset Market: Portable  Connectivity Applications Drive Volumes to their offering.
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Survey underscores the demand for Apple's debut cell phone.
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The wireless airwaves may get a bit more crowded next year following the announcement that Intellisync'sÂ  goAnywhere technology, unveiled this week, will give users of low-cost feature phones the same push e-mail capability that is now only available on pricier smart phones.
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(InfoWorld) - Even though major vendors have shifted their focus to expensive and profitable smartphones, shipments of PDAs jumped nearly 40 percent in the first quarter of 2007, according to a new survey. The result came from higher-than-expected customer demand for devices with GPS navigation and low-cost e-mail functions, according to a Gartner study released Tuesday. In recent quarters, hardware vendors like Research in Motion (RIM) and Palm have begun to move their product lines from PDAs to smartphones. That strategy took its toll in the first quarter with RIM shipping 0.2 percent fewer units than last year and Palm dropping out of the top five in market share. The vendors say that is exactly the result they wanted to see. In a quarterly earnings report in March, Palm said smartphone revenue rose from 28 percent in the third quarter of 2004 to 86 percent in the third fiscal quarter of 2007. Despite Palm's stance, other vendors still see an opportunity in PDAs. Mio Technology had a 162 percent rise in PDA shipments in the first quarter with particularly strong sales of its GPS-enabled car-navigation units in southern European countries, according to Gartner. Drivers there love GPS because they frequently cross borders on twisty roads marked in foreign tongues, said Gartner analyst Todd Kort. SamsungÂ followed a different path to PDA success, rising from 2,150 shipments last year to 451,000 units shipped in the first quarter of 2007 thanks to a strong marketing campaign for its BlackJack wireless e-mail device by Cingular Wireless. Mobile e-mail capability is attracting many companies and consumers to buy new handsets like the BlackJack and Motorola Q, Kort said. "The market is moving very strongly with wireless e-mail," Kort said. "That and GPS are the biggest drivers, compared to the old PDA stuff that drove the market five or six years ago, the contact lists and calendars that are available on almost any device now." Overall, the PDA market reached 5.1 million units shipped in the first quarter, up 39.7 percent over the same quarter last year, according to the Gartner study. RIM held onto its top position with 18.1 percent market share, topping Mio with 11.1 percent, Samsung with 8.8 percent, Sharp with 8.5 percent, and Nokia with 6.2 percent. As a measure of RIM's effort to shift its product line to smartphones, its lead of 7 percentage points was down sharply from 18.5 percentage points in the same quarter last year. Another effect of the decision by RIM and Palm to downplay the PDA market was to open the door for Microsoft to buttress its leading position in handset operating systems. Microsoft shipped 3.2 million units of Windows CE in the first quarter, a rise of 64.4 percent over the same time last year. Meanwhile, the RIM, Palm, and Linux OSes all lost share in that same year-over-year comparison, Gartner said. Windows CE led the PDA market with 62.1 percent market share, towering over the RIM OS at 18.1 percent, Palm OS at 6.1, Symbian at 5.6 percent, and Linux at 0.7 percent. Gartner defines a PDA as a data-first, voice-second device designed for use with both hands. That family does not include devices such as Palm's Treo 750 and the BlackBerry 8100 family, but does include cellular PDAs like the BlackBerry 8700. Nevertheless, despite Gartner's upbeat report on PDAs, other industry observers stress that handheld devices without any phone capabilities at all are losing the interest of users. IDC, for example, tracks what they call handheld devices, defined as pocket-sized computers that may have Internet access and text messaging, but do not support telephony. IDC sees evidence of a shift away from these types of PDAs, illustrated by Dell's decision to stop selling handheld devices entirely, according to IDC analyst Ramon Llamas. As consumer interest swings quickly from simple handsets to feature-rich smartphones, the first quarter of 2007 marked the 13th consecutive quarter of decline in shipments of PDAs with no telephone abilities, Llamas said.
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The company said it has benefited from growing demand for handsets that work on the new higher-speed networks being introduced by carriers in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
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Global mobile phone sales grew 35% to over 150 million in the second quarter, say industry analysts Gartner.
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As field gets increasingly crowded, advertisers become more audacious in grabbing our attention.
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(InfoWorld) - The number of iPhones manufactured by Apple may not be enough to meet customer demand when the smart phone goes on sale later Friday, CEO Steve Jobs said in an interview published the same day. "We had to make our best guess as to what the demand was going to be and what supply we were going to put in place many, many months ago. We built factories to build these things and everything. We've taken our best guess but it wouldn't surprise me at all if it ain't enough," Jobs told the Wall Street Journal in an interview. The iPhone, which combines the functions of an iPod with a smart phone, goes on sale in the U.S. at 6 p.m. and is one of the most anticipated gadgets in recent years. Two models will offered, the 4GB model costs $499 and the 8GB model is priced at $599. Users also have toÂ sign a two-year contractÂ with carrier AT&T. The cost of those plans range from $59.99 per month to $99.99 per month. Some prospective buyers have beenÂ camping outside storesÂ in hope of being among the first to own one of the new smart phones. A surge in demand for the iPhones could mean the devices are hard to come by at first, depending on the number that Apple and AT&T have in stock. A shortage of iPhones would not be unusual. Vendors often have a limited number of units to sell when a new product hits the market. In the case of products where demand is particularly high, such as for new game consoles, limited product availability -- whether intentional or not -- andÂ long lines outside storesÂ help build buzz and generate media coverage. Jobs also downplayed concerns over the iPhone's dependence on AT&T's EDGE network, which is slower than 3G (third-generation) networks. "You know every (AT&T) Blackberry gets its mail over EDGE. It turns out EDGE is great for mail, and it works well for maps and a whole bunch of other stuff. Where you wish you had faster speed isâ¦on a Web browser. It's good enough, but you wish it was a little faster. That's where sandwiching EDGE with Wi-Fi really makes sense because Wi-Fi is much faster than any 3G network," Jobs told the Wall Street Journal. He said the iPhone had been designed to switch to Wi-Fi when such networks are detected. Â
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Demand for mobile phones remains &quot;robust&quot; according to the latest update from retailer Carphone Warehouse. In the 13 weeks to 25 September, the firm saw connections grow by 25% on the same period a year ago to 1.55 million.
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Worldwide mobile phone subscribers totalled nearly 1.5 billion by the middle of this year (about one quarter of the world&#39;s population), according to the International Telecommunication Union.