Some smartphones, sometimes called NirvanaPhones, have a docking station with an external display and keyboard to create a desktop or laptop environment.
According to an Olswang report in early 2011, smartphones are experiencing accelerating rates of adoption: 22% of consumers already have a smartphone, with this percentage rising to 31% amongst 24-35 year olds.
Growth in demand for advanced mobile devices boasting powerful processors, abundant memory, larger screens, and open operating systems has outpaced the rest of the mobile phone market for several years. According to a study by ComScore, over 45.5 million people in the United States owned smartphones in 2010 out of 234 million total subscribers. Despite the large increase in smartphone sales in the last few years, smartphone shipments only make up 20% of total handset shipments, as of the first half of 2010. In March 2011 Berg Insight reported data that showed global smartphone shipments increased 74% from 2009 to 2010.
THE BORN OF SMARTPHONE
The first smartphone was the IBM Simon; it was designed in 1992 and shown as a concept product that year at COMDEX, the computer industry trade show held in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was released to the public in 1993 and sold by BellSouth. Besides being a mobile phone, it also contained a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, send and receive fax, and games. It had no physical buttons to dial with. Instead customers used a touchscreen to select telephone numbers with a finger or create facsimiles and memos with an optional stylus. Text was entered with a unique on-screen "predictive" keyboard. By today's standards, the Simon would be a fairly low-end product, lacking for example the camera now considered usual. However, its feature set at the time was highly advanced.
The Nokia Communicator line was the first of Nokia's smartphones starting with the Nokia 9000, released in 1996. This distinctive palmtop computer style smartphone was the result of a collaborative effort of an early successful and costly personal digital assistant (PDA) by Hewlett-Packard combined with Nokia's bestselling phone around that time, and early prototype models had the two devices fixed via a hinge. The Nokia 9210 was the first color screen Communicator model which was the first true smartphone with an open operating system; the 9500 Communicator was also Nokia's first cameraphone Communicator and Nokia's first Wi-Fi phone.
The 9300 Communicator was the third dimensional shift into a smaller form factor, and the latest E90 Communicator includes GPS. The Nokia Communicator model is remarkable for also having been the most costly phone model sold by a major brand for almost the full life of the model series, costing easily 20% and sometimes 40% more than the next most expensive smartphone by any major producer.
In 1997 Ericsson released the concept phone GS88, the first device labelled as 'smartphone'.
PALM, WINDOWS, SYMBIAN, AND BLACKBERRY
In 2000 Ericsson released the touchscreen smartphone R380, the first device to use the new Symbian OS. It was followed up by P800 in 2002, the first camera smartphone.
In early 2001, Palm, Inc. introduced the Kyocera 6035, the first smartphone to be deployed in widespread use in the United States. This device combined the features of a personal digital assistant (PDA) with a wireless phone that operated on the Verizon Wireless network. For example, a user could select a name from the PDA contact list, and the device would dial that contact's phone number. The device also supported limited web browsing. The device received a very positive reception from technology publications.
In 2001 Microsoft announced its Windows CE Pocket PC OS would be offered as "Microsoft Windows Powered Smartphone 2002." Microsoft originally defined its Windows Smartphone products as lacking a touchscreen and offering a lower screen resolution compared to its sibling Pocket PC devices.
In early 2002 Handspring released the Palm OS Treo smartphone, utilizing a full keyboard that combined wireless web browsing, email, calendar, and contact organizer with mobile third-party applications that could be downloaded or synced with a computer.
In 2002 RIM released the first BlackBerry which was the first smartphone optimized for wireless email use and had achieved a total customer base of 32 million subscribers by December 2009.
In 2007 Nokia launched the Nokia N95 which integrated a wide range of features into a consumer-oriented smartphone: GPS, a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash, 3G and Wi-Fi connectivity and TV-out. In the next few years these features would become standard on high-end smartphones.
In 2010 Nokia released the Nokia N8 smartphone, the first device to use the new Symbian^3 OS. It featured a camera that Mobile Burn described as the best camera in a phone, and satellite navigation that Mobile Choice described as the best on any phone.
In February 2011 Nokia announced a plan to make Microsoft Windows Phone 7 its high end smartphone operating system, reducing MeeGo to a research platform while still keeping Symbian for mid range and low range products.
ANDROID AND i-PHONE
Later in 2007, Apple Inc. introduced its first iPhone. It was initially costly, priced at $500 for the cheaper of two models on top of a two year contract. It was one of the first smartphones to be mainly controlled through its touchscreen, the others being the LG Prada and the HTC Touch (also released in 2007). It was the first mobile phone to use a multi-touch interface, and it featured a web browser that Ars Technica then described as "far superior" to anything offered by that of its competitors. At the time of the launch of the iPhone it was arguable whether it was actually a smartphone as the first generation lacked the ability to officially use third-party applications. A process called jailbreaking emerged quickly to provide unofficial third-party applications. Steve Jobs publicly stated that the iPhone lacked 3G support due to the immaturity, power use, and physical size requirements of 3G chipsets at the time. However, it has been rumored that the CDMA2000 Network Providers (Verizon, Sprint) refused to allow the iPhone on their network because Jobs wanted total control of the application store associated with the iPhone.
The Android operating system for smartphones was released in 2008. Android is an open source platform backed by Google, along with major hardware and software developers (such as Intel, HTC, ARM, Motorola and Samsung, to name a few), that form the Open Handset Alliance. The first phone to use Android was the HTC Dream, branded for distribution by T-Mobile as the G1. The software suite included on the phone consists of integration with Google's proprietary applications, such as Maps, Calendar, and Gmail, and a full HTML web browser. Third-party apps are available via the Android Market (released October 2008), including both free and paid apps.In July 2008, Apple introduced its second generation iPhone which had a lower list price and 3G support. Released with it, Apple also created the App Store with both free and paid applications. The App Store can deliver smartphone applications developed by third parties directly to the iPhone or iPod Touch over Wi-Fi or cellular network without using a PC to download. The App Store has been a huge success for Apple and by April 2010 hosted more than 185,000 applications. The App Store hit three billion application downloads in early January 2010, and 10 billion by January 2011.
In January 2010, Google launched the Nexus One smartphone using its Android OS. Although Android has multi-touch abilities, Google initially removed that feature from the Nexus One, but it was added through a firmware update on February 2, 2010.
According to Gartner in their report dated November 2010, total smartphone sales doubled in one year and now smartphones represent 19.3 percent of total mobile phone sales. Over late 2009 and 2010 Android's smartphone market share has increased very rapidly.
In Q4 2010, Android surpassed Symbian as the most common operating system in smartphones, with 32.9 million units sold versus 31.0 million. Android-equipped phones sold seven times more than in the prior year due to customers' increased preference for a device that can access websites while bypassing traditional computers.
In 2010 smartphone sales increased by 72.1 percent from the prior year, whereas sales for all mobile phones only increased by 31.8 percent. Smartphones make up 19 percent of all mobile phone.[35][36]
March 2011: Concerning the Xperia Play smartphone, an analyst at CCS Insight said "Console wars are moving to the mobile platform".
March 2011: An Android high-end smartphone which can produce 3D effects with no need for special glasses (autostereoscopy) was announced by LG Electronics.
Other application stores
Platforms other than the iPhone are able to download apps from any website, rather than only from a single app store; however, other companies have more recently launched their own app stores. Google launched the Android Market in October 2008. RIM launched its app store, BlackBerry App World, in April 2009. Nokia launched its Ovi Store in May 2009. Palm launched its Palm App Catalog in June 2009. Microsoft launched its Windows Marketplace for Mobile in October 2009. Samsung launched Samsung Apps for its bada based phones.
Operating System
2010 saw the rapid rise of the Google Android operating system from 4 percent of new deployments in 2009 to 33 percent at the beginning of 2011 making it share the top position with the since long dominating Symbian OS. The smaller rivals include US popular Blackberry OS, the trendsetting iOS, Samsung's recently introduced bada, HP's heir of Palm Pilot webOS and the Microsoft Windows Phone OS seeing a possible revival through an alliance with Nokia.
Source: wikipedia
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