Mobile Industry trend and Smart phones

I just wonder sometimes what will the mobile industry look like in coming few years and this made me come up with the idea of writing this article.
We all know Mobile industry is a very volatile market, we have been witnessing the rise and fall of many mobile handsets and chipset manufactures.

If you see on the right hand side ,we see an intresting trend ,from year 2006-2009 there growth curve of regular mobile handset is almost flat while the smartphone sales rise is quite steep.


Nokia are world leaders in Mobile since 1998 but as we all know they are also constantly losing their share in past few years and how can be forget Motorola which had a market share of around 16 % in year 2003 has almost lost the ground, but thanks to Motorola Android based Milestone they are desperately trying for comeback .On the other sides are the LGs and Samsung who are constantly eating the market share of other players,Samsung from around 12% in 2003 has grown up to >20% market share in recent days .On the smart phone front ,Nokia with Symbain was the clear leader few years back but again in this segment Symbain is losing ground to the RIMs ,iphone and new kid in the block ,Android .Android is a very short span has already reached the double figures .

Before getting into smart phone details I want to share something here.
We all keep hearing terms like Entry level phone, Feature phones and Smart phones, this might strike a question, what’s really the difference between feature phone and smart phone?
But before answering this question let me tell you smart phones evolution start way back in 1992 when IBM launched Simon which was more like n PDA with Modem functionality. But things have changed drastically in current scenario.
Ok, let’s try to answer this question.
Smartphone's operating system (OS), allowing users to run third-party applications.
They have ability to access the Web and download apps, a large storage capacity and a qwerty keyboard.
Feature phones are more of feature focused with a special capability or purpose in mind like Music or imaging. Smart phones include a broader range of features without heavily focusing on a specific purpose
To summarize Smartphone is a phone that has its own operating system and can run third-party applications. Classical Examples like blackberry, Apple, iPhone.

Counterview to what we just said is :
Feature Phones are not as expandable as Smart phones, but the line is blurring. Almost every Feature Phone sold today ships with Java Micro Edition (J2ME™), which is much like an operating system in that it allows users to download third-party applications to their phones.


As I mentioned earlier game is changing in the mobile industry and specifically the Smart phone.
The mobile wireless industry is historically dominated by the powerful network operators and mobile manufacturers design. But in present days its multiple functionalities, more features, the demand for near web- user experience on mobile devices and that’s why we see the sales figure of iphone ,android based phones are booming .
And there is also a trend ongoing where chipset makers or mobile manufactures are moving towards Smartphone platforms and Application processors to support them .TI has washed hand with its Modem business and concentrating on Application processors with OMAP(X) and who can forget NOKIA which is showing strong strategy shift in moving towards mobile services and concentrating on smart phone platforms .
Nokia is focusing a lot on OVI store, they have Maemo platform and recently they have joined hand with intel to form MeeGo , which is again an open source smartphone platform based on UNIX .There is also Qt framework started by NOKIA which is an application development framework and its claimed by NOKIA that Applications created by Qt can be ported on different operating systems as well as platforms.

Now let’s see how the smart phone industry is doing these days and let me share with you the key differentiators between these platforms.

The above comparison highlights certain things, for instance , Linux is the future ,it’s going to Linux all around .Another things quite evident is usage of open source code as part of these platforms .This comparison might not be highlighting all of them, but to name a few most of the platforms are using Webkit as the search engine ,SQLite for database etc ..etc .Another point to notice is the demand and usage of Java as the preferred programming language .

Let us also give a look to how are the smart phone sales moving further .This will showcase the point I was making earlier that how Symbain is losing ground and how Android is cementing its place in the future of mobiles .

With this I would like to conclude on this topic, let’s be game for the changing mobile industry, where ever it goes I am quite sure mobiles have a long and bright future and it’s going to be smart phones all around.

Are Europeans Superstitious too ?

Indians are superstitious ...you might believe this and might have got to heard this from your European or American friends as well .Even I do agree that yes some people in India are still superstitious ,but I had an opinion that its more to do with the poor and illiterate people .

But let me tell you superstition is an global phenomena , be it in other parts of Asia ,Africa ,America or Europe .Everyone have their set of superstitions .
I personally has an view that Europeans might not be in the grabs of so called superstitions but I was proved wrong .I will share some of the instances which I witnessed myself.

Let me share some recent instances. I got an chance to travel to Monteux ,Switzerland some weeks back and got an chance to interact with lots of European colleges from my company as part of some business completion .
And to my shock the first evening itself on the dinner table I witness lots of it, to start with I was been told “You are lucky and will meet someone special if wine bottle finishes while filling up your glass ” that was just the start .We started with plain wine and it was followed by Swiss dish named Fondue(pieces of Bread with hot and melted cheese ) and in just another 20-30 minutes came the another one ,when I was not able to hold the bread dipped in cheese with the fork and the bread fell in hot and yummy cheese and I was warned by an English friend that’s not good as it brings bad luck .I was shocked on hearing this but I used this as an opportunity to have more cheese along with the bread.That evening I had series of such bad luck as I repeated this 4-5 times ,but to be frank it was not intentional.

Been in Monteux I got an chance to visit a castle over there named castle of chillon and the guide over there shared some interesting superstitions from Medieval Europe. For instance she showed us an grand bed from that age but it was quite short in size and this made me curious, so I asked her why is it so ? and the answer was the users of it used to be afraid that sleeping with legs well spread doest leave any difference between live and dead and that left me wondering how people with power and money were not even able to have sound sleeps, I really felt petty for them.

There were few more such instances been reported by her just to break my belief that European are not superstitious. It also made me think that superstition is not just restricted to poor, uneducated people or certain part of world and its root are too strong to be uprooted easily. It also makes me think, opinions made are usually not true.