Smartphones Have Overtaken Feature Phones

According to an IDC press release, in Q1 of 2013, more smartphones were shipped than feature phones for the first time in history. To be precise, 216.2 million smartphones (51.6% of the total mobile phones shipped).

The trend is aptly summed up by IDC’s senior research analyst Kevin Restivo - Phone users want computers in their pockets. The days where phones are used primarily to make phone calls and send text messages are quickly fading away.

Here's the statistics showcasing smartphones overriding feature phones

Implications of this trend

As we have seen happening with computers and laptops earlier, we are able to see the same trend with the mobile phones so to say more features at the reducing prices. When more features are available on smartphones at every reducing prices, where is the need for feature phones?

While for the general population smartphones are a means of keeping in touch with friends through social media or playing games, for business users, smartphones allow for greater flexibility in performing job related activities. The BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) concept is being welcomed in many organizations despite all the associated risks.

Enterprise Mobility

Smartphones will play a major role in the way organizations perform their work going forward. Enterprise mobility is redefining the rules in many industries (Read our whitepaper on Enterprise Mobility). While some organizations are taking tentative steps in developing some mobile application for a specific line of business, others are strategizing by imagining a world where smartphones and tablet computers will be the norm and planning for that.

The evolution of enterprise mobility is driven by two forces. One is by the organizations themselves. Companies know what processes can be made more efficient through use of mobile apps and develop custom apps for their internal use. On the other side, application vendors are developing mobile apps as extensions for their apps. Whatever features are available in their normal desktop or web offering are being offered on the mobile platform also.

Prediction for the Future

Smartphones are here to stay and very soon, we might see the death of the lowly feature phone. However, when the smartphone becomes the standard, there will be a new breed of even smarter phones, geniusphones - which will probably pack in even more power and flexibility than today’s smartphones. We cannot even begin to envisage what such geniusphones will be able to do. Would you like to take a guess? Leave your comments and tell us what you think