Ten years ago a new company was launched. Their goal was to conquer the world for a new category of devices - they called them "WIDs" - Wireless Internet Devices. Today we call them smartphones, and the company that was launched found that 10 years was it's lifetime - it was Symbian, and they are now evolving into an open source release, with all the staff moving to become Nokia employees - who will invest further in creating more S60 phones - those WIDs that were promised 10 years ago.
Where have smartphones got to in the last 10 years? The growth has been far slower than everyone expected at the time. Today in most large european markets smartphone penetration is less than 20% of the market. So 4 out of 5 europeans are still using the phones that existed before the smartphone revolution.
Looking at the market there are some interesting learnings. Smartphones are the most expensive handsets in the market - however one of the countries that has the highest penetration of smartphone devices is Italy, where over 90% of consumers are on pre-pay tarriffs and pay the full cost of their smartphone up front.
So it seems that the evidence is that consumers want, and are willing to pay for smartphone handsets.
The wave of new handsets coming to market - including devices like the iPhone along with new platforms such as Android will accelerate this process.
Looking forward at where does the market get to in 2010 is interesting. Strategy Analytics forecast that in 2010 there will be 170m wireless devices sold in western europe. This is about the same number as today - as the market is 100% saturated and every device is a replacement device. Their forecasts are that by 2010 87m of these handsets will be smartphone devices - 51%.
So 12 years after the launch of the "Wireless Internet Device" promise it seems that more than half of Western European consumers will be walking out of stores with the devices.
So if you want to be delivering great, mobile experiences in western europe in 2010, you better be delivering that on a smartphone device that has a great browser, native applications available to be installed
