DvDand Solutions, LLC

Wall Street Journal, yesterday, reported that Dell is set to enter the smartphone market (subscription required).  Dell has been making prototypes based on Android and Windows Mobile platforms for more than a year.  The plans are still up in the air and Dell could decide not to enter the market after all. If it does go ahead, the announcement likely to come at the Mobile World Congress next month.

If Delll does decide to enter the market, in my opinion, it should stay for the long haul and innovate to make money.It should also look at some of the Japanese manufacturers, not just look at Apple, as the report suggests.  Being just another cell phone provider will not cut it, as Motorola and Palm can attest. Based on Dell’s track record, it will have to be head and shoulders better than in the PC business to survive.

According to DigiTimes who compiled the list of world wide shippment of mobile phones, LG has overtaken Motorola, albeit barely, by shipping 100 million mobile phones compared to 99.9 million for Motorola. 2009 promises to be a competitive year for both of these manufacturers with Motorola shipping several devices to Verizon this year and LG has promised to have 100 different devices shipped this year too.
The top 5 shippers of mobile phones for 2008 (with millions of units) were:
Nokia – 470
Samsung – 200
LG – 100
Motorola – 99.9
Sony Ericsson 96.6

This means that the top 5 manufacturers shipped nearly a billion phones in 2008.

[Via Boy Genius Report]

Gartner, today followed up with a press release reporting that the smartphones sales grew 15.7% in Q2 2008 over Q2, 2007. This amounts to 32.2m units sold in Q2. This is pretty much in line with what other research companies have recently reported and also what Nokia said in its forecast for Q3. Here is the breakup of sales according to Gartner:

What is interesting is that Samsung and LG do not make it on this list considering that they are 2nd and 3rd mobile phone makers worldwide.

NPD Group, a market research company specializing in wireless industry, announced that US consumer mobile phone market declined by 13% year over year in Q2 2008. The mobile phone industry shipped 28 million phones to US consumers during that period. However, on the bright side, the average selling price (ASPs) increased by 14% to $84 during the quarter. Also, digging into the numbers further, the sales of feature-rich phones accounted for bulk of the sales, with keyboard equipped phones sales doubling over same quarter last year.

As far as the manufacturers go, Motorola maintained a small edge over Samsung and LG, accounting for 21% of the market while Samsung and LG were tied at 20%. These three were followed by Nokia at 9% and RIM at 7%.

The carriers share of the market breaks down as follows:

AT&T – 29%
Verizon Wireless – 26%
Sprint – 11%
T-Mobile – 11%

IDC today published a state of the mobile phone industry called the Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker. According to this report, mobile phones shipments continue to see solid 115.3% growth worldwide in Q2, 2008 despite challenging economic conditions worldwide. This is thanks in large part to the smartphone features like GPS, multimedia and touchscreen. Vendors continue to experiment and provide new functionality even in emerging market. Here is a snapshot of the top 5 vendors courtesy of IDC (shipment are in millions of units).

    Vendor        Q208       Q208      Q207       Q207     2Q08/2Q07
                  Shipments  Market    Shipments   Market     Growth
                                       Share                         Share
Nokia                     122.0       39.9%      100.8      38.0%      21.0%
Samsung                  45.7       14.9%        37.4      14.1%      22.2%
Motorola                  28.1         9.2%        35.5      13.4%     -20.8%
LG Electronics         27.7         9.1%        19.1       7.2%       45.0%
Sony Ericsson         24.4         8.0%         24.9       9.4%       -2.0%
Others                      58.1      19.0%         47.7      18.0%      21.8%
Total                       306.0    100.0%       265.4     100.0%     15.3%

ComputerWorld reviewed some cool future mobile phone technology. Nokia is working on a shape-shifting phone that becomes what is most suitable for the task at hand. But, don’t hold your breath to get your hands on this little puppy. It won”t be available for atleast another 7 to 15 years. In the meantime, other developers are working on wearable phones, like the Handphone from the Italian designer Biodomotica. Or take the Packet phone from Turkish designer, which is a centimeter thick and 2″ square with double-clamshell design. The side flaps fold open to reveal a keyboard for typing email. You can read about these and other future technologies here. Also, as I reported earlier, Samsung has developed a haptic phone that provides 22 different feedback to touch.

Now that 1 million iPhone 3G (er, iBrick ) are out in the wild, is Apple laughing to the bank? Certainly, but it is not the reason for that. According to TechCrunch estimate, Apple might have raked in $5 million over the weekend since iPhone was released. Apple has not revealed any numbers. These are just back of the napkin calculation by Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch. I am excited and looking forward to Apple’s quarterly results for this quarter. That is when the actual numbers will be revealed. If I were a betting man, I would bet on Apple posting bigger gain in revenue and profits due to the App Store than iPhone 3G.

With Nokia looking to acquire the rest of Symbian that it does not own, and Google readying Android, the Platform Wars are about to begin. So, who will win the Platform War? It is a way early to predict the winners and losers of this war. However, the battlefield has been defined.

With Symbian on 66% of Smartphones, it would seem to have most to lose. So, with this latest announcement from Nokia, they are gearing up for the tough battle ahead. True, Nokia, has ambitions to transform itself from a phone company to an entertainment company. 

However, Adam Leach, principal analyst at Ovum, hit on the real reason, when he was quoted by Paul McDougall of InformationWeek saying:

“The creation of the Symbian Foundation reflects the fact that Symbian’s competitive landscape has started to change rapidly over the past year with new entrants and old competitors increasing their influence,”

They have seen Microsoft, IBM and now Google, make money from the software and services. They want to become a software company. It sees the handset market as a tough market with the Asian manufacturers leading the pack. While Nokia has some great handsets and are the leading provider of phones worldwide, they see the writing on the wall. They want to get out of the handset business. I see them spinning off their handset division in the next year or so and possibly exiting the handset business in 3-5 years.

Nokia will have its work cut out. Now that it is forming the foundation, it will have to tread a careful path so as not to alienate some of the handset providers who are members of the foundation. Also, Microsoft and Google are not going to give in easily. Not to mention upstarts like Apple with iPhone and RIM with Blackberry. Things are just beginning to heat up. Let’s see who remains standing when the dust settles.

With the much ballyhooed announcement of iPhone 3G at $199 starting price, it is going to sell fast like its previous version, when it is released on July 11. However, should businesses care about iPhone? After all, iPhone still accounts for only 6 million of 3billion+ phones worldwide.

With its Exchange support, MS Word, Excel & read-only PowerPoint support, and IT-focused security features, Apple is taking on both RIM Blackberry and Microsoft Mobile. With the new applications store and the rich revenue sharing model for developers, it has opened up a whole new world of possibilities. However, there are still some features that would make it a compelling case for businesses.

First being option of carriers. Granted AT&T is trying very hard to improve its customer service and take care of Apple customers, however, Ma Bell will have to do better to convince businesses to switch carriers just so that they can use iPhone.

Second, of course is the price. Apple did go ways in reducing the price barrier which Steve Jobs said was the number one barrier to adoption of iPhone. But, businesses look for volume discounts for both handsets and calling plans. It appears that AT&T has increased its data plan, while keeping the voice plan same for iPhones. This $10 per month increase combined with no volume discounts on handsets could be a deal-killer for businesses contemplating adopting iPhones.

In spite of these, businesses need to give iPhone the second look it deserves.