Smartphone Ecosystem (Part 11): Beyond Smartphones – Low End

By guest author Nalini Kumar Muppala The year 2010 promises to be an exciting year for smartphones, but it is easy to get carried away by all the talk about their power and capability. It is time to take a reality check. Not every player has had it easy competing in the smartphone market. For

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Smartphone Ecosystem (Part 10): Beyond Smartphones – High End

By guest author Nalini Kumar Muppala Retailers such as Target have recently started accepting coupons from smartphones. However, in much of the Western world one still has to make in-store electronic payments with a plastic card. Consumers in advanced mobile markets such as Japan and South Korea routinely pay using their phones.

Smartphone Ecosystem (Part 9): Applications

By guest author Nalini Kumar Mappala Part of the success of the iPhone can be attributed to the App store. To its credit, Apple  had the foresight to see the smartphone as what it is – a computing device and not merely a piece of communication equipment – and devise a strategy to sell software

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Smartphone Ecosystem (Part 8): Operating Systems, Part 2

By guest author Nalini Kumar Mappala The year 2009 has been the coming-out party for Android. There has been a lot of innovation as well as regular updates with exciting features. The scene at Microsoft, on the other hand, has been lackluster. Updates to Windows Mobile were incremental and more service updates than feature upgrades.

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Smartphone Ecosystem (Part 6): Cheaper Smartphones

By guest author Nalini Kumar Muppala There has been a lot of talk about cheaper smartphones coming our way. A slew of recent product announcements and promises from chip vendors seem to support this claim. It must be noted that the price in question is the real price of the device, not a carrier-subsidized (and

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Smartphone Ecosystem (Part 5): Devices, Part 3

By guest author Nalini Kumar Muppala As seen in the table below, each major component is dominated by a different set of companies. There is no dearth of competition, and we can thus be assured of continued innovation.

Smartphone Ecosystem (Part 3): Devices

By Guest Author Nalini Kumar Muppala The next three posts in the series focus on the hardware components of smartphones. Let’s now take a look at some of the flagship devices from major handset vendors. Getting under the hoods of these devices will give us a reasonable idea as to which handset chip providers are

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Smartphone Ecosystem (Part 2): Profitability

By guest author Nalini Kumar Muppala So, what makes smartphone an attractive business to be in? In short, smartphones, at least so far, have been a high-profit business. Consider Apple, RIM, and Nokia. While Apple and RIM are pure-play (as far as phones go) smartphone makers, Nokia makes phones that serve customers across the entire

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