Once the preserve of the geekiest of geeks, “smartphones” are about to become ubiquitous. Cellphones that have professional-grade cameras, that allow you to mix your own music like a DJ, that read you a book or newspaper, charge using sunlight or double up as wristwatches are just some of the gadgets that the cellphone industry hopes will help it ride out the economic storm.
It was hard to move at the Mobile World Congress, the industry’s largest annual trade show, in Barcelona last week without bumping into a company showcasing them. Once attractive only to anoraks, smartphones that can access the internet, download whizzy applications, have touchscreens, know where you are located, play music and high quality video (and still receive calls) are going mainstream as the rest of the industry reacts to the arrival, a year and a half ago, of the Apple iPhone.
The investment bank Jefferies estimates that global shipments of smartphones will increase 17% in 2009 to 191-million units, making them one of the only growth segments in a cellphone market that Nokia — which makes four out of every 10 handsets sold worldwide — has warned will be down at least 10% this year. Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, which has been trying to get its Windows software into phones for a decade, told delegates that in a few years’ time they won’t even bother with the term “smartphone” because the devices will be ubiquitous.
The fact that smartphones are one of the only growth areas of consumer electronics brought new faces to this year’s trade show. Companies including computer makers Toshiba, Asus and Acer, and possibly Dell, are looking to cash in on the boom, but their arrival poses a real threat, according to Nick James, analyst at Panmure Gordon. “The smartphone market is looking increasingly crowded and could turn into a bloodbath until cost is driven out,” he reckons.
But for now, the celllphone companies are too busy throwing ever more complex gizmos at consumers to worry about exactly where the money is going to come from.
Korean electronics giant LG came closest to creating a “wow” moment at the show when it unveiled the G910 wristwatch phone. The small touchscreen device can connect to a Bluetooth headset for anyone who does not want to be seen talking and listening to their wrist when they make calls.
It can also make video calls, for anyone who wants to feel like the hero of a spy thriller. And the phone is no chunkier than the sort of sports watch you would expect to see on the wrist of a Premier League footballer (though that may not be a good thing).
Not to be outdone, bitter local rival Samsung gave conference attendees a brief glimpse, on its exhibition stand, of its own range of watch phones. There are no details of when its not-very-catchily-named, but certainly slimmer, GT-S1100 will be available, but LG’s wristphone will be released by Orange in the United Kingdom over the next few months. It is expected to be free to anyone who is willing to take up a pay-monthly contract.
Also scoring highly on the design scale was Samsung’s BeatDJ phone, which is rounded at both ends; when it plays music, its built-in Bang & Olufsen stereo speakers turn into touch “turntables” that can be used to “scratch” and sample tracks to create new tunes.
Samsung was also one of the manufacturers unveiling a “green” phone. Its Blue Earth device, which is made from recycled water bottles, has a back covered with solar panels. LG is also working on solar-powered phones, as is Chinese manufacturer ZTE.
Sony Ericsson, meanwhile, created a buzz with its latest concept phone, codenamed the Idou. Like many of the handsets on show it has a touchscreen, but beats all the others hands down with its whopping 12,1 megapixel camera, enough quality for a professional photographer. Details of prices and availability are expected in the summer.
Most consumers expect a camera on their new device, and the quality of the photos they can take is improving rapidly. Nokia has teamed up with optics specialist Carl Zeiss to create the eight-megapixel N86, which can cope with both bright and low light settings — in the past most camera phones have only been good with one or the other. It should start appearing in spring.
Samsung took the wraps off its eight-megapixel camera phone, the Omnia HD. It goes one better than its Finnish rival in that it can record and playback high-definition video. With up to 16GB of internal memory and the capacity to take a 32GB MicroSD card, you can store 35 DVD-quality movies — enough to keep anyone amused when the in-flight movies selection fails to satisfy.
As for the newbies, Asus relied on its link-up with satellite navigation company Garmin for its Nuvifone M20. The phone is all about making it very easy to use satnav services on a mobile. Acer’s move into the smartphone market has only one device with any obvious gizmo appeal — the Acer Tempo M900, which has a slide-out keyboard and a fingerprint reader.
Microsoft announced a new version of its Windows Mobile platform at the show. Part of the reason for its redesign is the arrival of Google on the software scene with its Android operating system, which makes it easy for users to download applications on to their phone from the “Android Marketplace”. Apple has already made a big splash in so-called “mobile apps”, with iPhone users downloading more than 500-million programs via iTunes since the apps service launched last year. At this year’s show, Nokia, Microsoft and even operators Orange, T-Mobile and O2 all announced their own app stores in an effort to compete.
The applications available range from games and news feeds to incredibly complex tools such as iPointer from Intelligent Spatial Technologies (iST), which allows a cellphone user to point their device at any building and pull up information about it from the internet. The company has pooled information on 50 cities in Europe and 58 in the US to produce the equivalent of visual search. Ultimately it hopes that businesses will want to use it as a local advertising tool. Nokia, meanwhile, showcased kReader, an application developed for its phones by US-based KNFB Reading Technology, which uses a cellphone’s camera to decipher text and then reads it aloud to the user. It can read everything from receipts and bills to pages from books.
One of the biggest rounds of applause received by Rob Conway, the head of trade industry body the GSM Association, when he opened the event, was in response to his announcement that the major manufacturers and networks have got together to develop a universal cellphone charger. It is based on the micro-USB connection found on the BlackBerry Storm and should be ready by the end of the year. By 2012 most cellphones will use it. But by then, who knows how many other things a cellphone will be capable of doing? – guardian.co.uk