Mobile Phones Replacing Consumer Devices?
V3’s report on Gartner’s Jon Erensen’s session at Semicon West 2009 suggests…
"…market for smartphones is growing rapidly, and is cannibalising other sections of the consumer electronics market"
This has been the promise of Smartphones for a long time. I also mentioned a trend in mobile development enquiries, of companies thinking of using S60 as a platform for vertical applications, as far back as September 2007.
However, multi-purpose devices never really reached the usability of a dedicated device. Part of the reason was because the phone UIs themselves weren’t that good. Applications based on them also inherited the implicit poor usability.
Today, I can see how Gartner might be correct. UIs are better now and phones much more capable. Maybe many vertical consumer products can be implemented on mobile phones in such as way that’s they are good enough to compete with dedicated consumer products. This creates new markets and new opportunities for mobile developers.
