Predicting the future of any industry in this technology world can be very hard and man has certainly not learned how to see the future just yet, well from what we know. On our post about the Google Android OS vs. Symbian open source and the much talked about Android vs. iPhone 3G, we had a very interesting point raised.
Harikrishna Neerkaje questioned how we could think that Apple was not one of the biggest players in the future of the cell phone business. They raised some very good points. Saying, “Without a doubt Nokia will be a key competitor but so will RIM & Apple (at least as far as Smartphones are concerned). In fact there are quite a few other players who build excellent smartphones on the Windows Mobile platform who too will be key competitors.
The only thing certain is that Android is not a “Today’s” platform and predicting the future is something man has not yet learnt”.
These were the six main points raised by Harikrishna Neerkaje – First the most popular smart phone today by volume of sales is RIM Blackberry. Second the fastest growing smart phone today by volume of sales in the last 2 quarters is Apple iPhone. Third the largest Cell Phone Manufacturer by volume of sales (not just Smart phones) is Nokia. Fourth the largest Mobile Phone OS by volume of sales is MS Windows Mobile. Fifth is on the Symbian Foundation, as yet only an announcement. It will take time to operationalize, but does have an OS which is already on many smartphones. Sixth and last is about Android and The Open Handset Alliance, with no phone in the market as yet and none expected till end of Q4 2008 in the US. So as yet they are not a competitor to anyone and there is no “data” that indicates that they will be a serious competitor in this space at any time.
Harikrishna Neerkaje ended by saying, how does this make Android and Symbian the biggest players, what’s your view?
Are we seeing the evolutionary future of Android devices slowly being revealed? Today saw the second instance of a leaked device that will most likely include a dual-core processor, 4 inch screen, with global capabilities. The much circulated Verizon 2010/2011 road map described such a device named the “Motorola Droid Pro”. Just two days previous, pictures surfaced of a qwerty slider HTC device with almost the exact same specs. Snuggled right in between 3.7 inches and 4.3 inches, it seems 4 inches of screen real estate is becoming the magic number of not to big, nor too small. I wonder what sort of black magic has to be conjured to get these devices to have a decent battery life if they do indeed have dual-core and LTE running at the same time
