Smartphones set to become mainstream

Smartphones have until now been positioned as a premium product within the handset market. And such has been the demand for BlackBerrys and iPhones that, even in the global economic downturn, smartphone sales remained one of the few bright spots within the handset market. But over the next few months an array of new models from a variety of phonemakers, including some new entrants, is due to hit the market. The new entrants aim to bridge the pricing gap between smartphones and standard feature phones and bring the more powerful product to the mass market. According to Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner, overall handset sales are expected to shrink by 4 per cent this year compared to last year, while smartphone sales are forecast to grow by more than 20 per cent. Analysts say the expansion of the smartphone market will turn a fast-growing but relatively small sector into a more significant contributor to global handset sales volumes. Meanwhile, existing smartphone makers have been able to lower their cost of production since Apple's initial iPhone thanks to smaller and more sophisticated chips.