Smart seems to be the latest, most overused word in the technology space—smart phones (the s-phone?), smart grid, smart everything. We’re seeing many new smart mobile products lately, and they’re having a huge impact on the cellular networks. That’s both good news and bad news. Cellular carriers love the extra phone and data sales but hate the excessive loads of video and other services on their networks. What to do?

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Overall, mobile consumer electronics devices are forecast to increase by a factor of 55 from 2008 to 2014, says ABI Research. The category includes e-book readers, personal navigation devices (PNDs), digital cameras and camcorders, personal media players (MP3, etc.), and mobile gaming devices.

As for cell phones, growth is also up. ABI Research recently summed up 2009 sales for mobile handsets, saying that the year closed out with 336.5 million shipments in the fourth quarter. That puts the total for the year of about 1.153 billion units, which is down 4.5% from last year but overall not bad for a down year that ended pretty well indeed. The forecast is for 1.2 billion handsets this year.

While Nokia continued to dominate the worldwide handset market in the fourth quarter of 2009, other manufacturers jostled for their share with new models like the Motorola Droid and Cliq. Expect further movement as new smart phones hit the shelves this year.(courtesy of ABI Research)

Nokia still leads the world in handsets with a 37.7% market share (Fig. 1). Samsung was gung ho this year and upped its share to 20.5%, taking second place easily. LG captured the third spot with 10.1%. Sony Ericsson came in fourth with 4.3%, and Motorola slipped to fifth place with 3.6% despite the great success of its Droid and Cliq. HTC brought up the rear but is doing well, and with some new handsets on the horizon, it could also see its share rise. ABI Research has detailed reports on all of this data, so if you need the detailed breakdown, check out www.abiresearch.com.

The Flood Of Smart Phones

2009 was a banner year for smart phones, with lots of new models. More significantly, the public is finally accepting them in a big way. Apple’s iPhone 3GS is a significant improvement over its predecessor. I even upgraded my own original iPhone to the 3GS. Its speed makes e-mail and Web browsing a far better experience. The touch keyboard is still a challenge and the small screen is not optimum for some uses, but I’m used to it by now.