SAN FRANCISCO-Mobile phones will rule the electronics and computing industries in the coming years, proclaims a new report from research and consulting firm Zelos Group.
“The mass adoption of full-featured handsets will be disruptive,” said Seamus McAteer, senior analyst and managing partner for Zelos Group and the author of the report. “Consumers will substitute use of PDAs, digital cameras, gaming consoles and music players. An early indication of this is Nokia becoming a leading distributor of digital cameras.”
According to the firm’s “Defining the Market for Full-Feature Handsets” report, the market for advanced mobile phones will grow to about 290 million units by 2008, up from about 10 million units in 2003. The numbers mean that close to half of all mobile phones sold in 2008 will include some kind of operating system such as Symbian, Palm OS or Microsoft Corp.’s Smartphone OS. Such technological advances will pave the way for phones that can play video games, music files and operate as personal digital assistants.
“As handsets with multiple gigabytes of storage are launched in the next two or three years, it is possible to envision, for example, Hewlett-Packard launching an iPod with integrated W-CDMA transceiver and dual-use headset and speaker,” McAteer said.
Zelos Group predicts that shipments of full-featured handsets will overtake shipments of personal computers in 2006. The firm said such advanced mobile phones will sell for as low as $157 in 2006, just a few dollars more than the industry’s $138 average mobile-phone sales price for that year. By 2008, Zelos Group predicts full-featured phones will sell for less than the average mobile-phone selling price of $125. McAteer said more money will be spent on research into mobile-phone technology than on any other category of consumer electronics-ensuring rapid advancement in handset technology.
Zelos Group said Europe will embrace full-featured handsets, and Nokia likely will lead the way. The firm said carriers in North America also will promote advanced mobile phones, and in Japan, Zelos Group predicts 85 percent of all handsets will include some type of operating system by 2008.
Such rapid innovation will create a major battleground within the mobile phone itself, according to the report. Operating systems including Symbian, Microsoft Smartphone and Linux will battle for market share and dominance. McAteer said Symbian will gain significant traction in the short term, but the flexible and low-cost nature of Linux likely will propel the operating system to the top of the market in the long run.
