It’s the time of year when I indulge myself and write an article about my favourite smartphone developments of the year, and also look ahead to what may happen next year. It has been a busy year in the smartphone world, but one which also sprung up a few surprises which give an indication of what is to come over the next 12 months.
The iPhone and the DROID dominated the online news headlines and you would believe that these two platforms are the ones which will dominate the high streets going forward, but that is far from the truth. RIM has continued to buck the market with an operating system many see as outdated and seriously in need of a refresh and Comscore’s latest survey puts BlackBerry devices as by far the most likely to be purchased in the next 3 months; Pearl: 18%, Storm: 13%, Curve: 11%, Bold: 4%, Tour: 3%. The latest financials from RIM also show steady progress with 4.4 million new BlackBerry subscribers added. Is it possible that the current BlackBerry OS works best for new entrants into the smartphone market? I see BlackBerry smartphones being used more and more by non business people and there is little doubt that RIM is doing well, but this time next year I would not expect to see it dominating if the OS has barely changed. I could be wrong, but I believe a major OS refresh will be released in the latter half of 2010.
Apple will no doubt pop up with a new iPhone in 2010 and the rest will play catch up again. It is ironic that Nokia and Microsoft have attempted to cash in on the iPhones popularity and only managed to make it look even better, and more ironic still that RIM has ignored the iPhone and done better than ever before. I am expecting more good things from Apple in 2010 and a variant with a hardware keyboard would probably make me jump to the platform.
Android will continue to increase its market share and we can safely expect more devices from the likes of HTC and Motorola, but something tells me that it is not going to match the dominance of Apple and RIM. For all of the fun you get with an Android device, it is still an OS which requires work to use and I am not convinced that it has that special ‘something’ needed to propel it to the top.
Over the past three years most end of year assessments will discuss the possibility of Palm making it through the next 12 months and so far it has survived. I have to say that, once again, I am not convinced it will survive the whole of 2010 or more likely it will be bought up by a company like Nokia who needs what Palm has. No matter how you look at it, 2009 was not a successful one for Palm and with Nokia, Google, RIM, Microsoft and Apple (who are all much more powerful) I don’t see how Palm can compete on its own.
We have to also consider the feature phone market which is quickly morphing into a replica of the smartphone market (if there is such a thing anymore) and how this may impact sales of smartphones over the next year. This market is huge and as the likes of Samsung and LG create phones with QWERTY keyboards, social networking apps and better cameras that the consumer could hope for these could start to chop away at sales of more expensive fully featured smartphones.
None of the above is insightful industry analysis, but it is a guess at what may happen and is so vague that I can still proclaim myself to be correct in 12 months time:) I think 2010 will mark another huge shift in the mobile market led by Apple and possibly RIM, but whatever happens this segment of the industry is not slowing down anytime soon which is good news for all of us.
