Smartphones such as the Apple iPhone and Google's Android mobile platform are some of the products that will send cell phones into extinction.
By: Kristin Wright
Published: Apr 1, 2008
Updated: Sep 2, 2010
Smartphones are taking over as companies such as Apple releases its upcomign 3G iPhone, Verizon unleashes an open network and devices based on Google's open source Android mobile platform. The recent move in mobile phone technology could send cell phone into complete extinction.
Panelists at Monday's Smartphone Summit, a curtain raiser for the big CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas, also agree that consumers are choosing the smartphones, usually defined as mobile devices running on an open operating system, instead of typical cell phones.
In the United States alone, sales of smartphones will nearly double this year, to 14.6 million devices from 7.4 million units sold in 2007.
According to Andy Castonguay, director of consumer research at the Yankee Group, that a change in the mobile device market has now gained sufficient momentum as the smartphone will upset traditional business models as carriers get out of the practice of subsidizing handsets.
{slot15}"Over the next 18 months, you'll see many of the top-end smartphones offered subsidy-free," said Castonguay, "in exchange for a greater combination of offerings including one-year contracts or no contracts at all."
That development is already under way, as Verizon (NYSE: VZ) Wireless has begun opening up its cellular network to devices and applications from third-party providers. The launch of the software development kit for Apple's iPhone and the impending emergence of devices based in Google (NSDQ: GOOG)'s open source Android mobile platform also are expected to hasten the disappearance of the conventional cell phone.
In-Stat principal analyst Bill Hughes also agrees that big wireless carriers are realizing that "their profitability is now driven by smartphones, and more specifically by data applications that run on them." That means that in two or three years, it will be nearly impossible to buy a conventional cell phone. The Smartphone Summit panelists agreed.
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