Android OS smartphone sales to surpass OS X iPhone by 2012 says Informa

Market researchers Informa Telecoms & Media are predicting that sales of Android portable multimedia devices will outsell the Apple iPhone systems by 2012.

The researchers are also predicting a 10% fall in smartphone sales this year as the credit crunch bites, but sales will remain robust with 35.3% year on year growth and 13.5% penetration of all handsets. By 2013, that penetration will have trebled to just over 38%, driven by the open source move of the Symbian foundation.

I'm not so sure - the interface, usability and reliability of the iPhone will help keep sales up, and the success of the applications marketplace (coupled of course with iTunes) will make the iPhone harder to overtake.


“The smartphone segment is no longer as simple as it was a few years ago”, says Gavin Byrne, Research Analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media. “Since early 2007 Symbian, Microsoft, Linux and BlackBerry OS have been joined by Apple’s OS X iPhone, Android and recently Palm’s Web OS”.
“In 2008, there were almost 162 million smartphones sold, surpassing notebook sales for the first time”, says Byrne. Just over 49% of smartphones sold in 2008 were based on Symbian OS, a significant drop from a near 65% share it enjoyed one year earlier. While this is in large part due to the relatively poor performance of Nokia’s smartphone range, it is also an indication of the popularity enjoyed by competing platforms including Linux, BlackBerry OS, Microsoft Windows Mobile, OS X iPhone and new entrant Android. This underlines the growing challenge that these platforms may present, in the mind of device vendors and operators.
Openness is a key criterion, while all in the mobile telecoms space now see the revenue potential of applications and services. Now more than ever, handset vendors must develop strategies to maximise these new revenue streams while reducing costs. Factors like these have led device vendors to alter their software platform strategies, like LG’s recent public declaration of its intention to launch 50 new mobile handsets using Microsoft Windows Mobile. In the past year Motorola, Sony Ericsson and HTC have also significantly modified their approach to the smartphone market. It has also become a growing focus for ODMs and for the operator focussed strategies of ZTE and Huawei.

Developers are key
As more and more value moves from device hardware to software, and also to content, developers are becoming increasingly central to the mobile handset value chain. Platform and applications development are in many cases already reaping the benefits of open source components and approaches, with LiMo Foundation, Android and the Symbian Foundation being the most significant device platforms in market. “The decision to move the Symbian platform to open source is crucial in maintaining its leadership over Android, Linux and Microsoft”, says Byrne. The growing importance of content development is reflected in the efforts that Apple, Google, Nokia, Microsoft, Qualcomm and Adobe have gone to facilitate development and a route to market, as represented by their application stores.
“In the wider handset market, Informa Telecoms & Media expects that the global recession will cause total new handset sales to fall by 10.1% in volume terms in 2009” adds Byrne. “However, its effect will not be felt equally across all segments. While demand in the mid tier will fall away during 2009, sales of new smartphones will grow over 30% to 211.2 million units, driven by innovative new devices and operator subsidies designed to promote mobile data consumption, so that by 2013 almost four in every ten handsets sold worldwide will be a smartphone. With impressive growth rates like this, the smartphone market has proved too attractive to companies in adjacent market segments, such as leading notebook vendor, Acer.”

TI launches OMAP4 for 1080p video

Texas Instruments has launched its multicore OMAP4 mobile applications platform with support for 1080p video record and playback, 20 megapixel (MP) imaging and
approximately a week of audio play time. The new platform provides significant improvements in performance and play time compared to today’s most popular Smartphones, with 10x faster Web page loading times, more than 7x higher computing performance, 6x higher video resolution, 10x better graphics performance and 6x longer audio play time.
At the heart of the OMAP 4 platform is a 45nm system-on-chip with four main engines: a programmable multimedia engine based on TI’s C64x DSP and power-efficient, multi-format hardware accelerators; general-purpose processing based on the dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore supporting symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and capable of speeds of more than 1GH per core; a high-performance programmable graphics engine; and an Image
Signal Processor (ISP) for unparalleled video and imaging performance.
“For the past decade, TI has focused on providing an optimal balance of high performance and low power consumption in our OMAP product line to address our customers’ needs to quickly and easily address new market trends,” said Greg Delagi, senior vice president and head of TI's Wireless Business Unit. “The OMAP 4 platform will enable a new class of mobile devices that will redefine the boundaries of smartphones and MIDs.”
The new platform will support popular leading mobile operating systems and is validated for real-world use cases, taking into account the many elements of the mobile consumer’s experience to simplify application creation and help handset manufacturers get to market quickly.
The first members of the family are the OMAP4430 and OMAP4440, including:
o Four powerful, high-performance processing engines:
* General-purpose processing dual-core Cortex-A9 MPCore
* Programmable multimedia engine based on TI’s C64x DSP and power-efficient, multi-format hardware accelerators
* POWERVR SGX540 graphics engine
* Dedicated ISP
o Full 1080p multi-standard HD record and playback
o Digital SLR-like performance with 20 MP imaging
o 3D user interfaces supporting life-like graphics, intuitive touch screens, large local displays beyond WSXGA and HDMI compatible external displays
o Industry-leading power management technology:
* 10+ hours of 1080p HD video playback, 4+ hours of 1080p HD record
* 140+ hours of CD quality audio playback

The OMAP 4 platform will support Linux variants such as the Android Mobile Platform and LiMo, as well as Symbian OS and Microsoft Windows Mobile. Additionally, software for the OMAP 4 platform is tested and validated up to the application level, dramatically reducing development time. Further easing the design process, the OMAP 4 platform includes:
o Pre-integrated support for mobile connectivity, including TI’s current and future combo WiLink Wi-Fi solutions, NaviLink GPS solutions, and BlueLink Bluetooth solutions;
o Pre-validated modem interface software to easily connect the OMAP 4 platform to any external modem;
o New companion power and audio management solutions (TWL6030 and TWL6040 specifically designed to address the performance needs of the OMAP 4 platform; and
o Broad portfolio of other hardware solutions optimized for the OMAP 4 platform, including: DLP Pico projection technology, analogue components and other complementary technologies.
TI's OMAP 4 platform and development tools are expected to sample in the second half of 2009, with production expected by the second half of 2010. These products are intended for high-volume wireless OEMs and ODMs and are not available through distributors.

Qualcomm finally makes inroads at Nokia

After years of trying Qualcomm appears to have cracked Nokia, with the two companies planning to develop advanced UMTS mobile devices, initially for North America. The companies intend for the devices to be based on S60 software on Symbian OS, the world’s most used software for smartphones, and use Qualcomm’s current Mobile Station Modem (MSM) MSM7xxx-series and MSM8xxx-series chipset for processing performance and ubiquitous mobile broadband capabilities. The first mobile devices based on this collaboration would be expected to launch in mid-2010 and be compatible with the forthcoming Symbian Foundation platform.
“Nokia is very pleased to be in discussions with Qualcomm around designing mobile devices that can benefit from the high level of integration found on MSM chipsets,” said Kai Oistamo, executive vice president, Devices, Nokia. “We are eager to demonstrate to the industry the possibilities that exist when innovative and open software is combined with advanced hardware solutions.”
“Nokia and Qualcomm are leaders in advanced wireless technologies, and this new level of cooperation would bring exceptional leaps in mobile performance to people around the world,” said Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. “We are very excited about the possibility of the substantial synergies between S60 software and MSM chipsets.”

Smartphone shipments set to grow this year

Smartphone shipments worldwide are projected to grow 13% in 2009 to 164 million units, providing bright market opportunities for both handset and chip vendors in the current economy, according to a new report from market researchers Forward Concepts. Nokia and Symbian (now part of Nokia) continue to dominate the market.
With the economy expected to be on the mend in 2010, Forward Concepts forecasts a compound annual growth rate of 21.7% to the 387 million unit level in 2013.
Nokia continues to be the leader in Smartphone shipments, with an estimated 2008 market share of 34%, followed by RIM at 13%, Apple at 9.6% and Sharp at 5.7%. Sony Ericsson follows with a 5.3% market share, then HTC at 5%, Motorola at 4.6% and Samsung at 4%. 16 other Smartphone vendors constitute the other 18% share.
Currently, Japan leads in Smartphone consumption, with a 21% 2008 market share, followed by Western Europe at 18%, and North America and China, each with 17%.
Symbian continues to be the leading Smartphone operating system, with an estimated 49% unit market share in 2008, while Microsoft Windows has grown to a 14% share, and RIM with 13%. Linux and its Android implementations have reached 11%, followed by ARM's O/S X with 10%, Palm with 2% and Danger at 1%. Although Symbian is expected to remain dominant, market penetration and shares of most of the other are projected to grow.
According to Will Strauss, Forward Concepts' president and editor of the report, "Despite the slowdown in the overall mobile handset market, the strong growth for Smartphones is partly due to the uptake in mobile data which leads to higher revenue for the operators. Because of the higher data revenue that it brings, we project that higher-end feature phones will lose market share to Smartphones as a result of the narrowing spread in (subsidized) up-front net cost to the end user."

"Strong 3G mobile Internet demand will drive a long-term growth trend in the global Smartphone market with 2013 penetration levels exceeding 50% in the major operator-subsidized regions of North America and Western Europe."

said Co-author of the report, Satish Menon.

The report also forecasts the components that go into these devices, including key integrated circuits like digital basebands, RF transceivers and PA's, communication processors, application processors, graphics, multi-touch screen controllers, memories and chips for all the new functions being added to Smartphones...like camera sensors, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FM, GPS, Mobile TV, NFC, fingerprint sensors, accelerometers, etc.
The detailed 607-page study profiles over 80 companies and includes 64 figures and 152 tables plus appendix. It is available from Forward Concepts at: www.fwdconcepts.com/Smartphones