Smartphone Surge

Smartphone sales is set to surpass PC sales globally by 2011 according to RBC analyst Mike Abramsky.

While the total sales of mobile phones has actually decreased on a year-on-year basis in 2Q 2009, the smartphone segment has shown a healthy 27% growth despite the economic downturn.  Much of this growth can be attributed directly to the spectacular market gains by Apple’s iPhone.  RIM’s Blackberry range also contributed significantly to this growth.

Nokia, though a little late to this dance, has recently picked up the mantle again with the N97 model while the original smart-phone pioneers Palm are back in the game with the Pre and its spanking new WebOS platform.  Even traditional PC giants like Acer & Dell are  piling into this lucrative segment.

The good news for consumers is that many vendors are scrambling to produce cheaper smart phones.  These are designed to run on open operating systems such as Symbian or Google’s Android platform and targeted at the pre-paid subscription market.