I feel a little bit better about my struggle to find a SmartPhone that I’m willing to live with for a year or so. That’s because I expect by 2008 I will have migrated to Apple’s iPhone. But my (ahem) six-year old phone has a stone-cold dead battery, and I’m just not gonna put more money into it.
It seems like most of the "SmartPhones" sold in the US have Microsoft as an OS — just look at the offerings at Cingular, Verizon, T-Mobile. Rim and Palm have the best market share, supposedly. But the big three all charge a pretty premium for Blackberry data. And Palm has a crippled Treo, compared to Europe’s Nokias. And don’t get me started about how the Big Three insist that incoming phones have wiFi crippled. Grrr.
I found this great article at Internet News: Why aren’t smartphones more popular?
They cite stuff that I talk about in class (social use of computers versus phones, how different the US market is from elsewhere in the world, the competiting network technologies — too little competition in the US!).
According
to The NPD Group, smart phones only make up around two percent of total
wireless device sales in the U.S.. A smart phone is defined as a
telephone with an operating system, applications and, if not a full
keyboard, then one with the ability to input more than 12 digits.Part
of the problem, according to Avi Greengart, principal analyst, mobile
devices for the market research firm Current Analysis, is vendor
lock-in and the lack of portability between phones…Hughes
estimated that the smart phone market will start to grow and reach as
much as 12 percent of the market by next year. Even though the Palm
Treo and RIM BlackBerry dominate the U.S. market, they are fractional
players worldwide.The
Symbian OS has 65 to 70 percent of the market, followed by Linux. RIM
and Palm have single-digit marketshare worldwide, he said.
Although it makes me feel less alone in my frustration …. I’m still not sure I’m frustrated enough to spring for an unlocked Nokia 61.
