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Thursday, November 10, 2011

One day, every phone will be smart - and every tablet will be super

Mark Bridge writes:

We’ve previously talked on The Fonecast about ‘superphones’ - a relatively arbitrary description for high-end smartphones. Google described its Nexus One as a superphone when it was launched at the beginning of 2010 - although it’s also what Dr Who’s companion called her upgraded Nokia 3200 in 2005.

Now Strategy Analytics has a definition and a growth forecast. It says superphones will be the world’s fastest growing sub-category of wireless handsets this year, with global superphone sales expected to grow 200%.

Alex Spektor, Senior Analyst at Strategy Analytics, said “Superphones are a relatively new sub-category of wireless handsets that first appeared on the global market in 2009. Superphones integrate high-level operating systems with supersized displays of at least 4 inches and superfast processors of at least 1GHz. We forecast global superphone sales to grow an impressive 200% in 2011, increasing fifteen times faster than the overall handset market’s growth rate of 13%.”

In its way, that’s good news - but it’s also unsurprising. Faster processors are becoming more affordable and are being used more often. As podcast host Iain Graham has pointed out more than once, one day every phone will be a smartphone... even if the owner doesn’t know it.

Given the practicalities of pocket sizes, it’s unlikely that every smartphone will become a superphone. But what about tablets?  When does a superphone become a tablet?  Hmmm. Perhaps that description is still pretty arbitrary after all.

[Strategy Analytics report]

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Author: The Fonecast
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