Smartphones storm the castle!
500M Smartphones by 2012? Samsung thinks so...
With the market created by the Palm Treo, Windows Mobile Smartphone and Pocket PC now dominated by devices like RIM's Curve, Bold & Pearl and Apple's iPhone, and device appeal successfully having crossed over from 30-something male geek technophile toy to de rigeur college student and mom-about-town tool, the 'castle' of the mainstream market is now believed to be at risk by some planners at Samsung.
Touchscreen devices, long appreciated by PDA users for their intuitive capabilities, came into their own with the advent of the iPhone. It was not specs that won the day--it was taking intuitive interface to the next logical level. Apple created a phenomenon in the mobile phone market by cramming lots of 'old, last years' specifications back behind a skin that shouted "I gotta have that!" to millions. Just as the iPod crushed Creative's MP3 player market, the iPhone rewrote the rules for mobile interface. Palm, for all their Apple legacy and chatter about 'zen of Palm' simplicity, took years to get past themselves and understand the inherent differences of the mobile phone experience, and is only now about to release the Pre, the device built on an OS that they should have been working on 4 years ago.
Will Samsung prove to be right? Very possibly. Innovation coming out of the Blackberry Storm, the Palm Pre, and the next generation of the Apple iPhone will continue to push the market further and should keep helping 'ordinary' consumers find reasons they can't be without their mobile phones. More innovative applicaitons, more business solutions, and deeper market penetration that taps into broader trends like social media usage and Internet browsing behavior will make mobile access to these new tools even more indispensible.
Bring it on. And have fun stormin'! (Oh, btw, who's bringing the holocaust cloak in case things don't work out for Palm?)
Mike Compeau
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