ISEdb.COM

In the dog eat dog mobile phones market, vultures swoop at every opportunity of a player’s weakness. The high-tech smartphone market saw two major entrants Samsung and Sony Ericson barge their way with exciting new models introduced last fortnight, immediately after the high profile face off between RIM the makers of BlackBerry with regulators worldwide.

The Korean manufacturer Samsung who is today the second largest player in the mobile segment unleashed different versions of its Galaxy S Android phone with all major telecom networks Verizon, Sprint Nextel Corp., AT&T Inc, and T-Mobile  — as well as the smaller U.S. Cellular and Cellular South networks last week. This was immediately after the global launch of its flagship smartphone model Wave — using a new touch screen technology and the first phone to use its bada operating system. Sony Ericson followed the Samsung blitz  and unveiled three smartphone models, using Google’s Android operating system for two of them, and Nokia’s Symbian in one.

The USP of the Samsung phones are its bright and beautiful looks, though technologically it is as good as the competitor, as per early reports of users of its Captivate, Sprint and Vibrant models. These Galaxy S  touch screen phones have a 4” display glistening with a vivid screen powered by a  new technology called  Super AMOLED that makes the colours vibrant and with well designed captivating  icons as its names suggest. Besides they are cheaper than both the Blackberry and the Apple I phones.  The Sony Ericson phones are miniature models reminding one of the early Ericson  mobile phones, and have mixed reports from the early users.

Ever since the year 2005 that saw  smartphone sales cross the 50 million mark out of a  total sale of 825 million mobile handsets worldwide, the demand for the high-tech device  has grown at a pace of over 25% each year. Initially it was dominated by Symbian technology with Nokia and Motorola as market leaders. By 2007 BlackBerry had muscled in as the dominant supplier with Nokia as the next favoured alternative as the Symbian dominance started to fade.  By the year 2008 BlackBerry had  wrested nearly 40 percent of the market share with Nokia at 25% and Apple I phone having 18% share but a  year later  Nokia had powered back as the market leader.

Smartphone’s account for almost 25 % of the US market today and as per a Nielsen report may overtake the feature phones segment in the US by next year. As per the report Apple which has a 80% OS loyalty is the fastest growing in this segment with Android close behind with 70% user loyalty. Globally the picture is however quite different. Today the market has over a dozen players with Nokia leading with 40% market share followed by BlackBerry with 20% and Apple’s I phone having 14% of the segment with Google’s Android, the Taiwanese HTC and the Korean Samsung bringing up the rear.

With the recent controversy dogging Blackberry and regulators from India, UAE and other mid-east nations that is unlikely to be solved in a hurry, the smaller players are stepping up their bid to grab the spill off. The coming weeks may see new models from market leaders Nokia, BlackBerry and Apple in an effort to retain their market share and thwart the upstarts from advancing.