By 2006 standard features will include color screens, music players, downloadable games and browsing tools. In effect, smartphones will become pocket computers. Features will also include calendaring, address books and other features found on PDAs today. However, while smartphones will not replace PDAs because of their smaller screen size, there will be a lot more of them. 

How the market will evolve and the kinds of devices and features that prove useful remain to be seen. The following questions will need to be addressed.  

* Will the per capita use of smartphones in North America approach that of Europe? In Europe, a higher percentage of the mobile phone population sends and receives short text messages than in North America, in part because PCs are less ubiquitous in Europe, and in part due to the higher costs of voice messaging. The marriage of smartphones to the WWW will increase use of smartphones for short message communications in North America. Computers will, however, remain the heavyweight for messaging in North America and smartphone will take only a small bite out of PC based messaging. 

* What will be the dominant software for running smartphones applications? Symbian, and its open source code, that has been licensed by the top 6 mobile phone manufacturers, who together account for 80% of the handheld market, dominates smartphone technology today. Microsoft, new to this market, with the introduction of the Orange SPV, which uses a scaled down proprietary version of the Windows operating system, pulls a distant second. But, clearly Microsoft sees mobile devices as critical to its future. Microsoft will gain ground with dogged persistence, innovation, and deep pockets. Most importantly, Microsoft will tightly link smartphone software with its desktop and server software, so that users have access to databases, calendars, e-mail…on PCs and servers.  

* When will 3G be implemented and ubiquitously available to make smartphones truly useful for web-enhanced features? Smartphones and wireless third-generation (3G) go hand-in-hand.  The ambitious predictions of widespread deployment of 3G are not being met.  While wireless operators are pushing ‘scaled-down’ functionality utilizing 2.5G, it just makes obvious that widespread 3G implementation is being delayed.  Given the technical problems and uncertainties of switching to 3G, a good guess would be late 2003 or early 2004 before we begin to see widespread adoption.

 * Who will be the top dog vendor of smart phones, and why? Based on the current market trends, the best bet is Nokia, which uses Symbian to drive technology in its cell phones. Mobile phones are becoming commodity and fashion items where branding matters. Nokia is, however, a hardware manufacturer and certainly not known for its software prowess. Market dominance may well hinge on where demand for smartphones lies. If adoption is primarily driven by consumers, then we can expect that the Nokia-lead Symbian Consortium will carry their European dominance into the American market. Should demand be lead by businesses, that require integration of smartphones to their existing IT infrastructures, we can expect that Microsoft will be able to gain a sizable foothold in the mobile phone market. As future branding ties to innovation—primarily software driven innovation, that is—the future is essentially open. It is indeed possible that the Microsoft software that ties smartphones to PCs and servers will power the dominant player. 

With the development of smartphones as pocket computers, we are seeing another point of technological convergence between the software and hardware industries. It will be an interesting market to watch.