11 January 2012
David McQueen of Informa Telecoms and Media writes:
The smartphone market is expected to continue its rapid growth over the next five years and, as a consequence, is increasing in complexity. As a result of this market development, new opportunities are arising for smartphones to target various segments and price tiers. This has led to the implementation of a variety of strategies from players across the value chain, which is reflected in the market positioning of the different operating system (OS) platform suppliers.
Informa Telecoms & Media broadly defines smartphones as mobile handsets that offer following criteria enabled by an advanced OS:
- Smartphones by region by OS type
- Smartphones by OS by product tier split into three categories
- Entry-level smartphones
- Core/mass market smartphones
- Super smartphones
- Smartphones by OS and by usability split by:
- QWERTY only (communication) smartphones – primarily used for messaging and productivity to a certain extent
- Touchscreen smartphones (media) – primarily used for multimedia access and entertainment
- Hybrid smartphones (productivity) – elements of both QWERTY and touchscreen with hardware and form factor designed for productivity
- Telephony smartphones (numpad) – traditional ‘mobile phone’ smartphones without touch screen or QWERTY keyboard
- Smartphones by network technology, e.g. LTE, HSPA, CDMA, etc.
- Smartphones by OS by price tier, using five tiers, US$400
- Smartphones by storage capacity
- Smartphones by processor type (e.g., monocore, dual-core, quad-core)
- Smartphone users, by region by OS and by market type: postpaid versus prepaid
- Smartphone data usage traffic (MBs), by region by OS, by application type (e.g.. video, messaging, browsing Internet).
The majority of these smartphone segments have been forecast by Informa Telecoms & Media.
Deep software-hardware integration and the role of CPU/GPU integration
- Deep software-hardware integration is becoming entrenched in the mobile handset market, enabling an enhanced user experience without compromising power consumption.
- Software-hardware integration can be achieved using different approaches depending on the addressable market and the level of support of various OS platforms.
- Qualcomm is leading in software-hardware integration but other chipset manufacturers, using various approaches, are catching up.
- Software-hardware integration could be used at the application level rather than OS level to add smartness to low-cost devices: MediaTek is championing this trend.
- Open source will play a great role in facilitating software-hardware integration.
Is there a place for…
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© 2011 Informa Telecoms & Media
