The success of Apple’s iPhone is attracting host of other companies into the smartphone segment.  Besides the traditional mobile phone manufacturers, traditional PC makers are also eying this buoyant market segment with great ambition.  The devices they are creating are becoming more powerful and  feature rich.  These smarter mobile devices, coupled with increasingly ubiquitous wireless broadband networks, point to an emerging revolution in personal computing.

The BBC News website takes a look at the mobile future and examines how the mobile phone is slowly taking over the mantle as the centre of your social and multimedia experience.

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.