It doesn’t exactly take a genius to figue this out, but the analysts at In-Stat are predicting that over half the mobile phones that will ship in the US in 2012 will be smartphones. Most of them will run Google’s Android operating system, which again, isn’t a surprise since there are multiple Android powered handsets being provided by nearly every operator in America, versus one iPhone, now available on two operators. They go on to say that over 66% of the smartphones shipped in 2015 will have 3G, and that LTE enabled smartphones are not going to be as popular as many have hoped for. And their last tidbit of knowledge, because you have to buy their report to get more fine grain details, is that smartphone shipments will hover around 850 million units by 2015, and that soon after that they’ll be over 1 billion smartphones shipped per year.
Now of course the American mobile industry is quite unique. Many people are not aware that the device in their pocket is worth $600 or more. They pay $200 and sign up for a 2 year contract and then appear dazed and confused when they want to upgrade their phone just 10 months after buying it and are asked to pay the price of what amounts to a low end laptop. In this type of market smartphone adoption is going to be explosive, but that doesn’t mean that the many countries where people buy their devices unsubsidized are going to fall behind. Thanks to Google’s free operating system and Qualcomm’s cheap chips, the rise of the sub $200 smartphone is one that’s going to take the world by storm. It started with Huawei and the Ideos, pictured above, but it shouldn’t be too long before you see something as powerful as the 1 year old Nexus One going for $250.
Buying feature phones just doesn’t make sense anymore, so if you’re thinking of picking one up … don’t.