Manufacturers and Operators: Can smartphones affect this relationship?
by Jose Luis De Souza
Smartphones sales in the world in the first semester of 2010 increased 55% over the same period of 2009. In the second quarter of 2010 (2Q10), 19.8% of the cell phones sold in the world were smartphones.
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Smartphones became the most desired product by concentrating in one single device (portable and mobile) the functions of cell phone (voice) and data usually executed in one computer (PC).
The trend indicates that smartphones will substitute PC as the main device to access Internet. In 2011, smartphones sales are likely to overtake PC's in the world.
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| Source: Teleco and Gartner. |
Smartphones improvements, in usability and processing capacity, combined with the growth of 3G networks, promote an better user experience in the use of value added services (VAS), such as:
These services and many others can be accessed through applications which transform the smartphone in the main element to manage users life, concentrating information, tools for the management of user's personal and professional life and access to entertainment and corporative services.
The main role played by smartphones can affect, however, the relationship between operators and cell phones manufacturers.
Smartphones manufacturers seem to have understood that clients aren't truly buying products, but hiring services to do certain tasks (Theodore Levitt) and are each time more involved in the offer of value added services.
Apple, with its application store associated to iPhone, and RIM, with its message service (Blackberry), were pioneers in it. Nokia jumped on the bandwagon and launched the Ovi portal offering mapping, music and messages services.
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Source:Teleco and Gartner
In this scenario, increases the importance of the competition between the different operational systems used by smartphones, what requires from developers the production of many versions of the same application.
It's not a coincidence that the three biggest players in this market, those that seek to offer services, (Nokia-Symbian, Rim and Apple) use their own operational systems. HTC, Samsung and Motorola chose the Android, which is sponsored by Google, as a way to guarantee their presence in mobile Internet.
The growth in the use of smartphones and VAS services is essential to increase operators' data revenue, but there's a competition for the space to be occupied by each one of them.
Some mobile operators have shown concern about the closer relationship between smartphones manufacturers and its clients, mainly about Apple's power (with its application store) and the growth of Android in the same direction. In February 2010, a group of operators launched a project to create one common interface (API) for applications developers to be used by these carriers as a way to promote their application stores.
This scenario becomes more complex when we consider the "smart devices" conception which includes tablets, e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle and others. The success of Apple's iPad is driving to the launch of tablets designed by many smartphones manufacturers. Nokia, with Intel partnership, adopted Meegp (based on Linux) for this type of devices. We can observe that the previous tablets failed when they tried to bring PC for this device. What is making the difference now is the offer a smartphone with a bigger screen.
These trends, even though been late if compared with Europe and United States, can be noticed in Brazil. For more details about mobile VAS in Brazil, check MAVAM.
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