November 15, 2004

A recent survey shows that the market for smart phones will continue to increase dramatically during the next several years, with global shipments growing from 14.6 million units in 2003 to 125 million units expected in 2009.

According to research firm ARC Group, the worldwide smart-phone market will comprise fully 16 percent of the overall mobile-phone market, way up from the 3 percent smart phones captured last year.

ARC Group said smart-phone shipments will increase throughout the world, with North American users buying about 30 million units in 2009.

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Further, the ARC Group found that open operating systems like the Symbian platform, the Palm OS and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows will power up to 90 percent of all smart phones sold in 2009. Last year, one-third of all smart phones featured proprietary operating systems.

Although ARC Group did not point to a winner in the operating system market, new research from Gartner Inc. shows that Microsoft could score an early lead.

According to the firm, sales of Windows-based personal digital assistants surpassed those of Palm OS PDAs for the first time in the third quarter.

Windows devices accounted for 48.1 percent of worldwide personal digital assistant shipments, while Palm OS units represented 29.8 percent of the market. Shipments of Palm OS-based PDAs have declined dramatically, as the operating system commanded 46.9 percent of the market in the same quarter last year.

ARC Group defines smart phones as any wireless device "with advanced user interface and embedding more than three features such as music and video player and recorder, camera, MMS, games, web browsing, synchronization with PC, Bluetooth, etc."

Gartner's definition of the PDA market includes wireless PDAs such as the iPAQ 6315 but not smart phones such as the Treo 600.

Source: RCR News