Jennigay Coetzer – Business Day – 30 July 2009

Analysts predict that smartphones will double their share of the mobile handset market by 20% to 23% over the next four years, with unit sales reaching about 300 million a month by 2013. In a recent global survey of mobile phone users conducted by In-Stat, 32% of respondents said they would choose a smartphone the next time they upgrade their handsets.

Growth in demand will be stimulated by the increasing capabilities and ease of use of these devices and the increasing number of leisure and business applications that are being developed to run on them. All the major handset manufactures are setting up online stores from which users can download mobile applications.

This follows the much publicised success of the Apple App Store, from which 1.5 billion applications have been downloaded since its launch a year ago. IPhone users across 77 countries can select from more than 65,000 applications to download and more than 100,000 developers have joined the iPhone developer programme.

In-Stat predicts nearly 30% of new smartphones will be based on operating systems that support app stores by 2013. However, app stores need to be localised for each country, because local network operators and payment gateway providers may need to be involved in the download and billing process, and the handset manufacturers are working on this.

The goal is to enable payments for application downloads to be billed to users’ cell phone accounts. Applications and content feeds also need to be localised to suit each market.
Nokia launched its Ovi Store globally in June, giving users of its Series 40 and Series 60 smartphones access to 20,000 applications and other downloadable content, including games, videos and podcasts.

Users can personalise their profiles so they can have applications suggested them, such as a travel guide for the place they are visiting, based on privacy preferences they have specified. The recently launched Nokia N97 includes a pre-loaded, easy-to-use Ovi storefront.

Mathia Nalappan, GM of Nokia SA says some of the applications available at the Ovi Store are free, while others can be purchased with a credit card, in Euros. The company has also set up a local version of the Nokia Music Store, which provides access to 5 million titles that can be downloaded.

Sony Ericsson has launched its app store in several countries in Europe, mainly providing music downloads, games and content, and is in discussions with local mobile operators to launch the service locally early next year. Samsung has launched an app store in Europe that offers over 10,000 consumer and business applications and is aiming to set one up locally in time for the 2010 World Cup.

BlackBerry smartphone maker Research In Motion (RIM) has set up the BlackBerry App World app stores in Canada, UK and USA offering over 1500 applications and it plans to launch a local version before the end of the year. Deon Liebenberg, regional director for sub-Saharan Africa at RIM, says the low-cost data bundles offered by the mobile networks are making it more affordable to download applications. For example, BlackBerry users qualify for mobile data bundles from either network at R60 a month for unlimited internet access, including e-mail forwarding, browsing, calendar sharing and instant messaging.

Users also get applications pushed to them automatically, to use or discard, including FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, GoogleMaps and Flickr websites.