A Bloodbath for 2010: the Smartphone market preview

by Volker Weber

Nokia:

Do not put any credibility to any "Admob" stats or pay too much attention to Nokia 'failing' in the US domestic market for smartphones. If the choice is to be the desired smartphone brand in the 93% of the world's phone market that is not the USA, or the 7% that is the USA, Nokia has certainly made the right call to its strategy.

RIM:

Then they have the Blackberry instant messenger, which appeals to the youth in particular as it offers free messages between Blackberry users. That in turn brings in a contagion effect, you want to have the Blackberry specifically, because your friends use it. And then there is the cool factor, suddenly the Blackberry is the phone all older teenagers and young adults want to have. RIM is right now in a sweet spot, all things going for them. It is no surprise, that in the shadow of the world's most spectacular high tech launch ever, the iPhone - RIM has consistently outsold the iPhone and grown its own market share.

Touch vs. QWERTY:

Both RIM and Nokia know that the biggest single segment of the smartphone battlefield will not be touch screens, it will be QWERTY phones.

Apple:

... now most new rivals are all targeting this Apple area - not the enterprise space where RIM is, and not the low price angle where Nokia is. The new competition will almost all hit Apple square center. Like the Google Nexus One right now.

WinMo:

HTC CEO said in 2009 that 80% of all WinMo phones ever made, were manufactured by HTC. So now that HTC is shifting most of their smartphones away from the Microsoft operating system to Google's Android, is coming as a very hard hit to Microsoft.

Moto:

Motorola is doing its best, but their global handset market share has been in total freefall for years - they have gone from 22% to 5% in three years! - and they now are feeling the breath of RIM in their neck, a pure smartphone maker who may overtake Motorola in total phones shipped some quarter this year.

Palm:

Palm sells only about 800,000 smartphones so apart from being a curiosity in the US market, they are irrelevant in the big picture.

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2010-01-08 :: email :: twitter :: facebook :: google+

Comments

Really great, sums it all up in a good fashion.

Hubert Stettner, 2010-01-08 19:08

I really want to like (and get) the Pre, but I don't want to spend close to 500 Euro on a phone that appears to be on the verge to obscurity.
It's a damn shame...

Marc Beckersjuergen, 2010-01-09 00:02

The Pre is very likable. It may very well be the most successful smartphone launch for O2 Germany, ever. It's just a tiny company compared to the other players.

Volker Weber, 2010-01-09 09:38

"I would not be surprised if Palm passes onto history during this year."

Yes, I know that the phone market is faster moving (even) than the personal computer one has been, and I certainly know little about the US market, but I'm always a bit sceptical when I see someone using that kind of language - how many times was Apple written off during the 1990s-2000s, in exactly those terms?

Nick Daisley, 2010-01-09 19:08

YES BlackBerry Messenger is a Killer App for the BlackBerry device. But the tight integration of BES into Lotus Domino is for me the best feature ever. I see the BES as the best business email solution with the highest security level today.

Pre & Android is not business ready today.

Marco Foellmer, 2010-01-12 00:55

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