Smartphone Market Driven by Operating System Wars and Feature Migration

­While iPhone shipments are growing quickly, smartphones based on the Symbian operating system remain dominant and will continue to grow over the next several years, reports In-Stat. However, Symbian will wane, resulting in a drop in net Symbian-based smartphone shipments in 2014.

Meanwhile, the basis of competition will change from the OS to the functionality and "user experiences" that the phone can provide. The advanced feature sets of smartphones continue to evolve as users demand capabilities such as touch screens, increased camera resolution and Wi-Fi connectivity options.

"In-Stat believes new OSs such as Android and Maemo will cut away at Symbian market share," says Allen Nogee, In-Stat analyst. "Although there are relatively few open source OS-based smartphones in the market today, the open source OS momentum is difficult to ignore. After years of hype, it is easy to see that 2010 will be the year of Android."

Recent research by In-Stat found that shipments of smartphones with touch screens will more than double from 2008 to 2009. RIM OS has been gaining market share in the non-enterprise segment, speaking to the importance of clever hardware design in the segment.

Shipments of smartphone with accelerometers will grow to over 350 million units by 2014, while the total smartphone market in 2014 will be 412 million units.

Over 52% of a smartphones cost is made-up by displays (touch screens), baseband and apps processors, and software and licensing make-up. Clearly, making a phone "smart" has significant cost impacts.

Posted to the site on 27th October 2009