There are millions of people around the world owning smartphones and the number keeps on rising. A smartphone can browse the web, receive, send emails, and run a number of applications that are custom-written. That is on top of the basic functionalities of storing contacts, making phone calls, sending and receiving text messages. Smartphone sales are almost hitting the 50% mark of all phones sold. In due course, every phone sold will mostly be having all features of a smartphone.
Smartphones are fast. They are used to hold data, organize our lives, connect to the internet, and run programs. They are taking the place of PCs, which we always thought was something in our daily lives that could not be changed.
Nowadays, all you need is a strong smartphone like iPhone, HTC Desire, Samsung Galaxy, just to name a few, and you are ready to have access to all data you need for personal and business use.
For example, a person who has been diagnosed with diabetes, will only be required to download an application that monitors glucose levels and gives diet advice. You can take readings anytime and anywhere. You do not need to use a PC or even start the excel program on Microsoft, you can easily find vast number of phones for sale with reasonable prices.
That clearly indicates the huge shift in computing. Having understood the paradigm shift, Microsoft went ahead and bought out Nokia, one of the largest manufacturers of handsets in the world. They are now using the brand to roll out smartphones using Microsoft operating systems.
In 2010, a major shift happened; PCs had always recorded significant sales over smartphones. However, during that year, PCs sold amounted to 85m compared to 55m in the first three months. This led to analysts predicting a cross over which now looks inevitable. By the last three months of that year, 100 million smartphones were sold, compared to 94 million PCs.
Now, reason behind this could be that smartphones are much cheaper than PCs. You can buy strong, fast and reliable device like HTC Desire (for example) for a 150€, laptop for 250€ and a PC for 450€ (an office PC, not some strong machine). So, if we compare prices and new technologies idea of smartphone replacing a PC is plausible.
Let’s mention some technical advantages of having a smartphone. First thing that comes to my mind is cloud, you can connect to Internet and use Google doc’s or Microsoft OneDrive to edit and send documents. We used computers for such things, well, now you can connect a keyboard to your phone. It won’t be too long before we start connecting our phones do screens in our office and use our phones just as a dock.
According to Tomi Ahonen, an executive who formerly served with Nokia, smartphones are expected to continue growing in sales. By the end of the decade, they will be approaching the billion plus mark. The trend of PC sales however is stagnating, or modest at its best.
Smartphones bring computing power right into our hands. Internet connectivity is possible almost anywhere around the globe. They are getting even more popular than televisions since you can carry it anywhere without the baggage that comes with transporting a laptop or a desktop.
Smartphones are also expected to have a dramatic effect in developing countries. Considering that, electricity connections are not there in every home, or the cost of buying a PC proving prohibitive, a smartphone is the future solution. Cyber cafes revolutionized information gathering in developing countries. The same effect or even bigger is expected.
In terms of infrastructure, it is easy to build internet connection through a mobile network instead of using physical telephone cables. Countries like India and China realized that long ago, and that explains the reason why mobile penetration in those countries is much higher than physical landlines.
With the early signs of a slowdown in the PC market, smartphones are slowly replacing the PCs. Apart from the wide screen and typing interface that comes with PCs, most of their other uses can be handled through a smartphone, which is more convenient and user friendly.
