The mobile phone industry is on the warpath once again. This time the centre of attraction is the smart phones that are geared to take on laptops, PDAs and all the other gizmos designed for people on the move.

A smartphone is a mobile phone offering advanced capabilities beyond a typical mobile phone, often with PC-like functionality. For some, it is a phone that runs complete operating system software providing a standardized interface and platform for application developers. For others, a smartphone is simply a phone with advanced features like e-mail and Internet capabilities, and  a full keyboard.  According to David Wood, EVP at Symbian, “Smart phones differ from ordinary mobile phones in two fundamental ways: how they are built and what they can do.” Most devices considered smartphones today use an identifiable and open operating system, often with the ability to add applications  in contrast to regular phones which only support sandboxed applications . These smartphone applications may be developed by the manufacturer of the device, by the network operator or by any other third-party software developer, since the operating system is open.

In terms of features, most smartphones support full featured email capabilities with the functionality of a complete  personal organizer. Other functionality might include an additional interface such as a miniatureQWERTY keyboard, a touch screen or a D-pad, a built-in camera, contact management, an accelerometer, built-in navigation hardware and software, the ability to read business documents in a variety of formats such as PDF  and  Microsoft Office, media software for playing music, browsing photos and viewing video clips, internet browsers etc. One common feature to the majority of the smartphones is a contact list able to store as many contacts as the available memory permits, in contrast to regular phones that has a limit to the maximum number of contacts that can be stored. The driving factors for the increasing use of smartphones is the need for real-time access to information and on-demand access to applications such as e-mail, calendar, contact and other information round the clock.

Smartphones have now become the norm of the day, especially with the people continuously on the move and those who want to keep in touch with the office mails.  Worldwide smartphone sales totalled 32.2 million units in the second quarter of 2008, a 15.7 per cent increase from the second quarter of 2007, according to Gartner, Inc. In addition, of all mobile device sales, smartphones’ share remained stable at 11 per cent.

InStat, a market research firm, has stated that about 18 million smartphones have been sold in the APAC region in 2006 and is expected to increase to 64.2 million by 2010. As per IDC, 70 per cent of mobile devices would be smartphones by 2010. Currently the market for smartphones is 38 per cent.

India is one of the fastest growing markets for the mobile industry. 2006, India witnessed sales of 69 million handsets, doubling from the 32 million mark reached in 2005.India added close to 20 million cell-phone subscribers in second quarter 2007, taking the total to close to 185 million. This is supposed  to increase further. A target of 250 million phone connections is expected. Number of subscribers will double in the next 3 years and Broadband connections are set to increase 8 fold. While Urban to rural population split will rise from 29% (2005) to 41% by 2030, this will boost the demand for  smart phone.

A wide range of smart phones have been launched in the mobile market. Smart phone  designed and marketed by Apple Inc.  known as the Apple iPhone  with a flush multi-touch screen and a minimal hardware interface has attracted the mobile users to a great extent. The devices lacks a physical keyboard, so a virtual keyboard is rendered on the touch screen.

The more commonly known smartphone BlackBerry, was released in 2002.Modern BlackBerry handhelds incorporate an ARM 7 or 9 processor, while older BlackBerry 950 and 957 handhelds used Intel 80386 processors. The latest GSM BlackBerry models (8100, 8300 and 8700 series) have an Intel PXA901 312 MHz processor, 64 MB flash memoryand 16 MB SDRAM. C

From the market leader Nokia there’s the 9210i, priced at Rs 33,919. Nokia has upgraded the 9210i and it’s Windows compatible.Since smartphones offer PDA-like capabilities, high end cameras, internet access and navigation software it’s today a businessman’s best friend. So much so, the non-smart phones are today called ‘dumb-phones’. As  Rick Roesler, vice president of handhelds for HP,said in a separate presentation “Smartphones are computers you talk to”.