'iPhone effect' ripples through smart phone market

The 'iPhone effect' is filtering through the rest of the handset market as other manufacturers add new features to remain competitive in the face of Apple's touchscreen device.

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Among the features likely to proliferate in terms of enhancing user interface experiences include touchscreens, touchpads and accelerometers allowing tilt and shock sensing, as well as haptics for providing tactile feedback, according to analyst house ABI Research.

The market for smart phones will grow from around 10 per cent of the total handset market last year, to 31 per cent by 2013, the analyst predicts, partly because of mobile operators' desire to grow their data revenues, and from a general trend pushing "smart" operating systems down into middle-tier devices.

Smart operating systems are being optimised to run on processors with lower performance, and there is a move towards supporting smart operating systems in single-chip mid-range devices in order to unlock more data revenues, said ABI Research VP Stuart Carlaw.

He said that while the market is currently dominated by Nokia and Symbian, Linux and the "growing stature" of Windows Mobile will put pressure on the establishment.

Separate research from MultiMedia Intelligence calculates that 500 million music phones were shipped worldwide last year - outnumbering shipments of personal media players such as the iPod by almost 300 million units. The company predicts that by 2011, more than half of all mobile phones could be considered music phones as they will feature music codec functionality (such as MP3 or AAC) and a memory slot which allows users to carry a personal music library.