News Smartphones to account for half of UK mobile market next year

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/07/11/smartphones-to-account-for-half-of-mobile-m/1

 

Big love for android. i can use it, my dumb friends have no problem with it and my technophobic father even enjoys using it. i was interested in rim/bb but android had the better looking future at the time, which is important when we are talking about 24month contracts.

 

It's already happened - Smartphones outsold "dumbphones" in the UK back in March 2011. This is from counting up all the sales of phones in the UK each week as well, not from a survey.

 

I bought a Droid (a Desire) and, frankly, I regret not splashing out on an iPhone 4. Everything on Android just feels like it's all still in beta, and the number of glitches nearly outstrip my terrible old Nokia 5800.

I mean sure, you get more choice and you get some more freedom with Android, but why is that a good thing in a phone, I want something that works as and when I need it to. I can deal with the odd glitch in Windows because there's no real time factor, but when I'm out and about and I need to call/text/whatever and it freezes, the lock screen screws up or some other stupid glitch occurs I just hate it.

And @Bauul, in case you hadn't noticed, people don't buy a new phone every week to use, people use the same phone they had a year or more ago in a lot of cases. Use =/= No. of sales.

 

i hope Apple will not miss the trick here for their new iPhone announcement.

as said in the article, most people buy a cheap smartphone first, before placing their loyalty on a particular platform. that's how i entered touchscreen smartphone market: iphone 2G on cheap first, then upgrade to iphone 4 on its release. (heavily tempted by 3GS, but was poor as a student)

so if Apple can produce an iOS phone cheaper than HTC Wildfire to draw people into their eco system. Apple may gain quite a large market share from this smartphone boom.

 

They can't. Part of the appeal with Apple is it's exclusivity due to cost of entry. Apple's marketing mirrors that of a fashion company after all...

I should dredge up the posts from my history where I predicted exactly this

 

Ah okay fine, that was me reading the article too fast - my bad! Although in my defence the following 90% of the article is about what phones the respondants had just bought.

Interestingly, I worked in the industry for a couple of years, mostly with phone manufacturers, and from their point of view "ownership" figures were pretty unimportant. Basically this is because so many people hold on to their phones for years, they might own a particular brand but they're not contributing to the market in any way.

Instead, they were far more interested in how many phones sold each month/quarter/year, which was a far more immediate concern, as it's on that that a company lives or dies.

 

I'm very much looking forward to moving to Android when my contract is up in a few months as Nokia really left me with out a paddle in terms of Apps/Updates for the N900. Great hardware/software but without the apps its a bit boring!

 

I've got no problem with the apps on the n900 - then again all I wan't is a python interpreter, c++ compiler and an x terminal so I probably don't classify as the average smartphone user.

 

Smartphone count increases yet available bandwidth, data speed and data allowances decrease.

 

NEWSFLASH: Garcia Hotspur in Demonic phone hacking scandal! Garcia Hotspur, the globe trotting happy go lucky demon slayer denies the claims of his arch nemesis Fleming about hacking into his HDT Desired and deleting the names of some of his potential demonic posessions. "A Demon can't even do an honest days posession without one of these bleedin do-gooders turning up with their bleedin Holy Water and Crosses " said Fleming " and now he's even hacked into me bleedin phone as well". When asked about the claims Garcia simply said "My name is Garcia Hotspur, hunter of demons. My wrath is your Hell!".

 

Since everyone needs 2 phones in any case (business & personal), I got an iPhone and an android based phone, they both have features I really love, whomever can meld the 2 into 1 will make billions!!!

Cheers,
S*D

 

I feel your pain mate, though a fair bit more! I got an N97 on release with a 2 year contract and BOY did I suffer. Just got myself a Samsung Galaxy S2 and I'm not looking back

For those who favour Apple over Android, I say to each their own. Android can be a brilliant platform, but obviously the hardware isn't anywhere near as well vetted as Apple. If you get a great phone than IMO it's better than iOS as a platform.

 

I would say my shop at the as in merchandising is 60% smartphones at the moment and sales wise at 40% smartphones now

 

the n900 isnt a smartphone - well nokia didnt sell it as one. they constantly said it was a mini/palm computer with phone function. and it was squarely aimed at the techie types who fancied getting dirty with something, one of the reasons they were quite difficult to get hold of.

 

And half of the people buying Android phones go "Huh? Whats Android?". To them its just buying a fancier phone.

 

I'm a candidate for a "dumb phone".
As my criterium for 90% is "Long Battery Lifetime".
I'm old enough to have had phones that barely lasted a day, and it's a bloody annoyance.

Anything under a weekend is unacceptable.
An week is a must.
two weeks is what I get from any old nokia (with a new battery)

The only thing "Smart" I'd like the phone to do is have a free (connectionless) GPS map.
OVI-maps offer this, but alas only for the dying Nokias

 

Unfortunately there Nokia will soon all be windows based phones

 

Word on the net is Apple will be launching two phones, a budget iPhone 4GS and the iPhone 5.
Apple are now playing catch up in the phone market to be honest, they are fair too behind the Android world in terms of specs, price and market share. As good as the new iPhone 5 will likely be, the Samsung Galaxy S3 will likely eclipse it.