Informa Telecoms & Media is predicting that the Smartphone segment will be the fastest growing part of the mobile handset market in 2006, showing a year-on-year volume increase of over 40%. The prediction is contained in a new report from Informa, Mobile Applications & Operating Systems: 3rd edition.
The report contains more than 350 pages of independent analysis of current and future software terminal platforms, including operating systems, application platforms, user interfaces, mobile browsers, mobile device management and different service clients.
It says that other segments will show slower rates of expansion than Smartphones, with basic phones growing by 4%, low feature phones by 19%, and feature-rich non Smartphones by 20%.
Informa predicts that the mobile handset market will continue to enjoy healthy growth, with sales expected to reach 943 million units in 2006, up from 814.5 million units in 2005.
Although the feature-rich phone market, particularly Smartphones, will continue to enjoy healthy growth at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 35.5% until 2011, sales of basic phones will start to decline from 2007, to reach about 129 million units sold in 2011, down from 239 million in 2006. In 2011, low feature phones will represent the second smallest segment, as sales of these devices will start to decline from 2010 and will reach 431 million in 2011, down from 455 million in 2009.
While the handset market continues to enjoy healthy growth, vendor differentiation is becoming increasingly complex owing to the growing number of features and functionalities these devices are required to handle says Malik Saadi, Principal Analyst and lead author of the report. Market segmentation continues to challenge mobile OS and application platforms developers to offer appropriate software for each segment. As a result, developers need to offer greater levels of customisation and granularity in their platforms if they want to widen their appeal across a range of operators and device vendors handset portfolios. For these players, the most pertinent segmentation is that based on handset technology.
The increased interest in open OS by both operators and device vendors will see Smartphone sales growing strongly from 53.7 million in 2005 to 75.1 million in 2006 and reaching 333 million in 2011, Informa believes. The strongest forecast growth to 2011 is expected to be in the area of feature rich, low-end Smartphones, mainly due to significant price reductions of these devices and improvements in their multimedia capabilities. Indeed sales of these devices are expected to increase at a CAGR of 46.7% until 2011. A portion of this growth will be due to the replacement of feature rich non-Smartphones by Smartphone powered devices. As a result, Smartphones will represent almost half of all feature rich, and more than one in four of all handsets sold in 2011.
The report costs 2,495 for a paper copy, 3,743 for a single-user PDF, or 4990 for a single-user PDF plus paper copy. A multi-user licence price is available on application.
For more information, or to order a copy, click here. 
