The global mobile phone market continues to sky rocket

By the end of 2012, more than 5 billion mobile phones will be in use around the globe. Among these will be 4.4 billion camera phones and 1.2 billion smartphones. To put things in perspective: the installed base of television sets and personal computers is 1.9 and 1.4 billion, respectively. These astonishing numbers come by way of Tomi Ahonen, a former Nokia exec rated the most influential expert in mobile by Forbes in 2011. Ahonen released his annual analysis on the mobile phone industry this week and pre-published these numbers along with some other statistical tidbits on his blog.

The data provides some neat insights about the scope and composition of the mobile phone market. For example we tend to forget that less than one quarter of mobile handsets are actually smartphones. Moreover, even in 2012, only 11 percent of global handset sales will be premium smartphones, Ahonen notes. I.e. those phones everybody keeps talking about currently account for little more than one tenth of the market (in unit terms). Almost 60 percent of all mobile phones sold in 2012 will cost less than $79 dollars and that is without the carrier subsidies we all grew accustomed to.

This chart shows the prevalence of selected features in the global installed base of mobile phones.



http://www.statista.com/topics/840/smartphones/chart/653/prevalence-of-selected-features-in-the-global-installed-base-of-mobile-phones/

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Mapplegate: A Brief Take On Apple Vs. Google Maps

The mobile world is very fickle. Apple consumers are throwing a fit because of the change in map providers. I must admit I was reluctant to download myself but jumped in anyway. Others don't seem too inclined. On our internal Yammer feed there was a lot of chatter about what a good alternative was to the Apple offering. This was before the IOS was released.

Maps are strategic IP because they capture consumers' intent of where they want to go, which creates the opportunity to intervene and shape consumers' paths. Apple doesn't want Google to have that data on its users and doesn't want to give Google the opportunity to serve location-based guidance. The problem is that maps are difficult to build -- Nokia and Google (the two main map providers) have been building their map IP for years. Nokia maps, for example, are on nine of 10 in-car GPS systems, each of which acts as a probe that continuously improves Nokia's maps. Apple can't catch up overnight, and it seems as if Apple was premature in pulling the plug on Google Maps -- it has produced a consumer backlash, at least among early adopters.

via Mapplegate: A Brief Take On Apple Vs. Google Maps | Forrester Blogs.

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Bad news for Windows Phone Development

Market research firms, such as Gartner and IDC, publish estimates of global smartphone shipments on a quarterly basis. While these numbers are very helpful to determine who's currently on top of the smartphone market, there is one other metric that is just as important, if not more. Let's say you're an app developer. Of course you're interested in short term trends, because they give you an idea which platform has a future. But if you want to know if a platform is worth developing for NOW, what's at least as important is the installed base of that platform, i.e. the number of phones that are actually in use at a given point of time.

Former Nokia executive turned consultant Tomi Ahonen has recently published his estimates for the global smartphone market and the message is clear: if you're planning to develop apps for Windows Phone, you might want to think again. Why, Windows Phone has a global installed base of 14 million units. A number ridiculously small compared to Android's 427 million and Apple's 198 million. Even Bada, a low-end operating system pretty much left for dead by Samsung, has a larger installed base than Windows Phone does. So if Microsoft really wants to establish Windows Phone as the "third ecosystem" in the mobile game, the Redmond-based company has a rocky road ahead of it.

This chart shows the global installed base of smartphones at the end of Q2 2012, broken down by operating system.

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• Windows Phone to surpass BlackBerry in install base (arstechnica.com)