THE SMART PHONE market will continue to grow by leaps and bounds, with the composition and makeup of the smartphone ecosystem changing just as quickly, says new research from In-Stat.
In its report Smart Phones: A Worldwide View, the market research firm forecasts that unit shipments of smart phones will be nearly 850 million by 2015, as they move toward the 1 billion shipment mark.
“There are several critical factors that drive smartphone success,” said principal analyst Allen Nogee, in the report’s press release. “These include a powerful browser, a wide variety of apps, an easy to navigate user interface, and a good keyboard or touch screen. Additionally, other intangible attributes, such as being ‘fashionable’ and that ‘your friends have one’ are important.”
Recent In-Stat research also found:
– More than half of U.S. handset shipments will be smart phones by 2012;
– Android is maintaining its momentum and will continue to be the leading OS. The demise of Symbian has been greatly overstated. On a global basis, annual unit shipments of Symbian-based handsets will continue to grow, resulting in Symbian having the second highest unit shipments of all the smart phone Oss;
– The smart phone OS war is heating up, as relatively new or renewed entrants such as MeeGo, Bada, WebOS, and others join a very crowded market;
– By 2015, over two thirds of smart phones will still be WCDMA-based. LTE smart phones will comprise only a small minority of annual handset shipments, even in 2015; and
– The display and baseband/apps processor are the two high cost items in the bill of materials. Other significant items include memory, camera, software and licensing, case and manufacturing.
