Smartphone Revolution

The idea gets compelling day by day. Its not something that you can ignore. Yes the smartphones have entered our lives like a miniature standalone creature but what they did to us is a history now. For a very long time, the phone market was stagnant. Right up until the launch of the iPhone, manufacturers kept churning out new models of mobile phones which changed in size and shape, but didn't offer the critical flexibility which would catapult us into the Smartphone age. Mobile phones did exist but they were still button operated and touchscreen phones, though available, still made a rare public appearances and importantly they had to be used with a stylus to get them to work.

  The one ‘i’ that changed everything. The iPhone; despite diversified whims and fancies about Apple's restrictive policies, one cannot do away with the fact that that they gave the world the first glimpse of a phone which you could customize and run applications on - and yes, they made it look cool. Since then, operating systems such as Android have upped the iPhone in terms of functionality and flexibility and it only looks to get better. The Smartphone revolution has begun.

The key factor that differentiates any phone from a Smartphone is flexibility. It is simply your own horse, ride it the way you want it to. Like a PC, you install programs on it which make the phone uniquely customized to you. This flexibility ties in perfectly with the flexibility of another emerging communications technology - VoIP. Cost, scalability, and flexibility are the three highlighted differentiating factors of VoIP and service providers have leveraged the customizability of smartphones to make VoIP as widespread as possible. Each Internet Telephony Service Provider (ITSP) has a special way of operating that sets their VoIP system apart from the others.Not to everyone’s surprise most of these vendors also have their own Smartphone applications for various operating systems like Symbian, iPhone, and Android.

But Definitely someone missed the show. Microsoft is still a juggernaut in the PC business. Windows-based machines are still selling over 300 million a year, but they missed the Smartphone revolution, and even though they were the first to really push the tablet, Apple basically redesigned it and left Microsoft in the dust.

This paradigm shift has occurred because the differentiating line between PCs and smartphones is just getting finer with every passing hour. We have been using programs such as Skype on PCs for years, but only now are we starting to do the same with smartphones. The same goes for tablets as well. The idea has been reinforced that there is just one way forward. Stagnant software systems have taken a backseat and will never return. The future is devices which give control back to the user in terms of what they want to do with it. The future is customizability of devices. Like it or not this is going to be a challenge to the Smartphone industry. The other thing that is awaited is how much these manufacturers reap the benefits customizing OS like Android oftentimes and coming up with a new version of Smartphones. The game has just picked up the pace, though a lot is still to unveil.

References-Deccan Herald, Buzzle, Techreport