Smartphones Continue Growth as Handhelds Shipments Decline

[Mike Temporale]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.canalys.com/pr/2005/r2005071.htm' target='_blank'>http://www.canalys.com/pr/2005/r2005071.htm</a><br /><br /></div>Canalys has released their quarterly report on the current state of the mobile device market. The highlights of this quarters report is that overall global shipments of "smart mobile devices" is up by 105% for year on year in Q2 of 2005 and that shipments of converged devices are up 186%, while handhelds are down by 14%.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/images/Temporale-20050727-CanalysReport.jpg" alt="User submitted image" title="User submitted image"/> <br /><br />Last week we reported on a <a href="http://www.smartphonethoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8841">Gartner report</a> that had shipments of Linux based devices outpacing Windows Mobile devices. The Gartner report only looked at Windows Mobile for Smartphone, and left out the Pocket PC Phone Edition devices. Canalys didn't make that mistake. If you look at the numbers Canalys are reporting, there's no Linux to be found. It must be part of what makes up that Other 11.9% category. ;)

[Sven Johannsen]

From the linked page, Worldwide Mobile Devices uses the established Canalys smart mobile device product segmentation and definitions to give clients a consistent worldwide view of the market for handhelds, wireless handhelds and smart phones. (my italics)

I'd love to see those definitions. Especially the smart phones. Note, not smartphones or Smartphones, but smart phones. How smart does a phone have to be to be considered smart?

I've recently been noting some interesting usage of 'wireless' when it comes to handhelds too. In this case I assume it means you can make regular phone calls, (as opposed to just VoIP phone calls). I always thought though that IR, BT, and WiFi were wireless technologies. I've even seen GPS starting to be listed as a wireless technology, as in "has four types of wireless technolgies, WiFi, BT, GSM/GPRS &amp; GPS".

[Mike Temporale]

That's always been something that bugged me. I wish there was a clear definition of Smartphone / PDA phone / Feature phone / Regular phone, that everyone could use. :?