If there’s one thing that came out of the recent Reuters Global Technology summit, it’s the fact that the sale of smartphones will grow this year.
Lee Williams, chief of the Symbian Foundation, said sales of smartphones will grow 12 to 15 percent this year. He said larger display sizes and more memory for media are encouraging consumers to buy smartphones.
“For the first time people are realizing you don’t have to carry your digital camera with you and your phone, for the first time people are realizing that you can do your email and access Internet services on your mobile phone,” Williams said.
Some analysts are forecasting that phones with advanced capabilities, like e-mail or Internet browsing, will grow more than 30 percent. ARM, the world’s leading chip designer, said it expects the smartphone market to grow 10 percent and SFR, France’s second-largest mobile operator, said it has seen a strong demand for smartphones.
“There we are seeing strong demand and strong growth,” SFR Chief Executive Frank Esser said at the summit.
Although smartphones are seen as a bright spot, the cell phone market as a whole is shrinking. From January to March, the cell phone market saw production decrease by 13 to 16 percent and the market is expected to decrease by 10 percent this year because of the recession.
A sign of the tough times, Nortel Networks, Canada’s wireless equipment maker, and Qimonda, Germany’s equipment maker, have filed for bankruptcy protection. Despite this, Williams said, the mood in the wireless industry has begun to improve, with companies seeing “the light at the end of the tunnel.”
“They realize they are still in a tunnel and they don’t know how long it will take to the light, but if you go back two or three months nobody could even see the light,” he said. “It’s still tight and awful … I do think some still have to be hit by a train in this tunnel though.”
As for the future of Symbian, Williams said he expects membership to grow to more than 100 by the end of this year, excluding independent software vendors. The foundation had 78 members in February.
The foundation inherits intellectual property from Nokia and other former shareholders of Symbian, a United Kingdrom-based smartphone maker. Nokia bought out other shareholders of Symbian last year and committed to give its software to an independent foundation that would develop it on an open-source basis.
Since then Symbian has lost market share to companies like Apple and Google, but Williams said he expects that trend to turn around. He said Symbian has seen increasing interest toward its software from chinese and Taiwanese companies. Symbian has already been in talks with Huawei anad ZTE, Chinese companies known for their aggressive pricing.
“We have very active discussions with both of those companies,” Williams said, adding that it’s likely one or two of China’s mobile carriers, three to five original design manufacturers and at least one chip maker would join the foundation.
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