Smartphone Markets and Technologies – 2nd Edition

Mobile phones are by far the most pervasive consumer electronics devices
globally. Total handset shipments grew 8 percent in 2010 to 1.3
billion units as the world economy started to recover. Mobile phones
can be divided into segments based on price or device capabilities. For
instance, a broad distinction can be made between smartphones that
support native third party applications and featurephones that do not.
Smartphones is the fastest growing segment with shipments increasing
by almost 74 percent in 2010 to 295 million units. Smartphones are
receiving more attention from handset manufacturers, network operators
and application developers. Handset vendors adopt smartphone
operating systems in order to reduce development time and cost for
new advanced handset models. Operators promote smartphones that
drive adoption of postpaid subscriptions and data plans. Both handset
vendors and operators also strive to attract developers that can bring
additional revenues and customer interest from their applications. Most
importantly, an increasing number of users are now discovering how
smartphones can act as personal computing devices enabling access
to the mobile web and applications, besides voice and text services.
Wider availability of mid-tier and low cost smartphones has already led
to a decline in sales of mid- and high-end featurephones. Shipments of
entry handsets with limited or no support for third party applications is
also forecasted to gradually decline as the cost of featurephones and
smartphones become progressively lower and therefore become a viable
option for more users. Berg Insight forecasts that shipments of
smartphones will grow from 295 million units in 2010 at a compound
annual growth rate of 32 percent to 1.2 billion units in 2015.
Along with a growing number of device manufacturers and software
developers entering the mobile industry, the number of smartphone
operating systems available has also increased. The early smartphone
operating systems Symbian, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry OS have
been joined by new proprietary operating systems such as Apple’s iOS
and Samsung’s Bada OS. Several Linux-based operating systems including
Android, LiMo, webOS and MeeGo have also been released.
In addition to basic operating systems for featurephones, many handset
vendors now use multiple smartphone operating systems across
their device portfolios. While this creates a broad choice of devices for
customers, it also creates increased development costs for handset
vendors and fragmentation for application developers. However, maturing
web technologies for handsets will eventually facilitate service
deployment on handsets in the same way the browser has become the
primary delivery platform for PCs.
Android became the leading smartphone OS in Q4-2011 with 32 million
handsets shipped – about two million more than Symbian. The slow
progress of its development of the improved Symbian platform and the
MeeGo platform for high-end smartphones ultimately led to Nokia’s radical
change of strategy to adopt Windows Phone as its main operating
system for smartphones. Symbian remained the leading smartphone
OS based on annual shipments with 107 million units, ahead of Android
with 69 million handsets shipped in 2010. Apple’s continued success
with its iPhone handsets enabled the iOS platform to outsell BlackBerry
handsets in the second half of 2010 to become the third largest operating
system. For the full year, both RIM and Apple each shipped about 48
million smartphones. Like Symbian, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform
has lost market share consistently after the iPhone and Android
appeared on the market. Microsoft introduced its completely redesigned
Windows Phone 7 platform in October 2010. The new platform has been
relatively well received even though the first handsets using the platform
do not compare favourably with the licensees best handsets based on
other platforms in terms of hardware design.
Over the years, thousands of applications have been developed for
Palm, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian smartphones. At first,
application developers had difficulties to reach a broad user base in absence
of a suitable delivery channel. In 2008, the Apple App Store was
launched with immediate success removing this hurdle. All leading operating
system providers and handset vendors have now launched their
own application stores. Berg Insight estimates that the total number of
downloaded applications for smartphones grew from 3 billion globally
in 2009 to about 9.5 billion in 2010. Revenues from applications have at
the same time doubled year-on-year to € 4 billion in 2010.

1 Mobile handsets and smartphones
1.1 Overview of handset segments
1.1.1 Main handset segments
1.1.2 Popular handset categories and form factors
1.2 Introduction to smartphones
1.2.1 Smartphone operating system technologies
1.2.2 Proliferation of smartphone operating
systems
1.2.3 Growing end-user demand for smartphones
1.2.4 Mobile network operators show interest in
smartphones and apps
1.2.5 Application stores provide a new channel to
the market for developers
1.3 Smartphone trends
1.3.1 Evolution of smartphone ecosystems
1.3.2 Evolution of smartphone input mechanisms
and user interfaces
1.3.3 High-end smartphones challenge PCs
1.3.4 Best selling smartphones in 2010
2 Smartphone operating systems
2.1 The Android platform
2.1.1 Android OS versions and features
2.1.2 Android development tools
2.2 BlackBerry OS
2.2.1 BlackBerry OS versions
2.2.2 BlackBerry OS development tools
2.3 iOS
2.3.1 iOS versions and features
2.3.2 iOS development tools
2.4 MeeGo
2.4.1 Linux distribution with support for multiple
portable and connected devices
2.4.2 Application development frameworks and
tools
2.5 Microsoft operating systems for handsets
2.5.1 Windows Mobile to be consigned to niche
markets
2.5.2 Windows Phone 7 increases focus on
consumer devices
2.5.3 Development tools for Windows Phone 7
2.6 Symbian
2.6.1 Current Symbian versions
2.6.2 Symbian transitions to a continuous
improvement model
2.7 WebOS
2.7.1 WebOS versions
2.7.2 WebOS development tools
2.8 Other handset operating systems
2.8.1 Brew MP
2.8.2 Samsung’s Bada platform
2.8.3 LiMo Platform
3 Application stores
3.1 Overview of application stores
3.1.1 Vendor independent application stores
target multiple platforms
3.1.2 Application store revenues
3.2 OS developer application stores
3.2.1 Android Market
3.2.2 Windows Marketplace for Mobile and
Windows Phone Marketplace
3.3 Device vendor application stores
3.3.1 The Apple App Store
3.3.2 BlackBerry App World
3.3.3 HP App Catalog
3.3.4 Motorola Shop4apps
3.3.5 Nokia Ovi Store
3.3.6 Samsung Apps
3.3.7 LG Application Store
3.3.8 Sony Ericsson PlayNow Arena
3.4 Operator application stores
3.4.1 The Wholesale Application Community
3.4.2 AT&T AppCenter
3.4.3 China Mobile Market
3.4.4 Orange Application Shop
3.4.5 Verizon V CAST Apps
3.4.6 Vodafone 360 Shop
4 Handset hardware platforms
4.1 Overview of handset hardware platforms
4.1.1 Handset hardware components
4.1.2 Wireless connectivity technologies
4.2 Mobile application processor
technologies
4.2.1 Smartphones are the new battleground
between ARM and x86 processors
4.2.2 Discrete application processors power highend
smartphones
4.2.3 Integrated communication processors
enable cost efficient devices
4.3 The handset chipset industry
4.3.1 Industry consolidation continues
4.3.2 Handset baseband vendors
4.3.3 Connectivity chipset vendors
4.3.4 Sensor IC vendors
4.4 Cellular connectivity and handset
platform vendors
4.4.1 Broadcom
4.4.2 Freescale Semiconductor
4.4.3 Intel
4.4.4 Marvell
4.4.5 MediaTek
4.4.6 Nvidia
4.4.7 Qualcomm
4.4.8 Renesas Electronics
4.4.9 ST-Ericsson
4.4.10 Texas Instruments
5 Handset manufacturers
5.1 The handset market in 2010
5.1.1 Device shipments reach new record
5.1.2 Smartphone sales drive handset revenues to
an all-time high
5.2 Nokia
5.2.1 Device portfolio
5.2.2 Market analysis
5.3 Research In Motion
5.3.1 Device portfolio
5.3.2 Market analysis
5.4 Apple
5.4.1 Device portfolio
5.4.2 Market analysis
5.5 HTC
5.5.1 Device portfolio
5.5.2 Market analysis
5.6 Samsung Electronics
5.6.1 Device portfolio
5.6.2 Market analysis
5.7 Motorola
5.7.1 Device portfolio
5.7.2 Market analysis
5.8 Sony Ericsson
5.8.1 Device portfolio
5.8.2 Market analysis
5.9 LG Electronics
5.9.1 Device portfolio
5.9.2 Market analysis
5.10 Second tier smartphone vendors
5.10.1 Acer
5.10.2 Dell
5.10.3 Fujitsu Toshiba Mobile Communications
5.10.4 Hewlett Packard
5.10.5 Huawei
5.10.6 Kyocera Sanyo Telecom
5.10.7 Lenovo Mobile Communications
5.10.8 NEC Casio Mobile Communications
5.10.9 Panasonic Mobile Communications
5.10.10 Pantech
5.10.11 Sharp
5.10.12 TCL Communication
5.10.13 ZTE
6 Market trends and forecasts
6.1 Market trends
6.1.1 Changing demands reshapes the wireless
chipset industry
6.1.2 Focus on smartphones among vendors and
operators is accelerating
6.1.3 Web technologies will eventually overtake
native applications
6.1.4 Smartphone operating systems are
becoming ecosystems
6.2 Smartphone shipments and market
shares
6.2.1 Handset shipments by segment
6.2.2 Smartphone shipments by geography
6.2.3 Smartphone shipments by OS
6.2.4 Smartphone shipments by vendor
6.3 Handset shipment forecasts
6.3.1 Handset shipment forecasts by primary
access technology
6.3.2 Handset shipment forecasts by feature and
price segment
6.3.3 Smartphone shipment forecasts by segment
6.3.4 Smartphone shipment forecasts by region
6.3.5 Smartphone shipment forecasts by
operating system
Glossary