A recent report from IMS Research is forcasting clear skies for Bluetooth technology this year, claiming 500 million Bluetooth-capable devices will be shipped this year. Stereo bluetooth is still in its infant stages, but making progress. A2DP compatibility on phones has been a considerable bottleneck for market penetration, but so has style. The Motorokr S9 is a good example of how stereo Bluetooth design is becoming more mainstream, and after swinging by a Telus store last night, I found the even-sweeter BTS-500 (just came out last week, not on their site yet). BlackBerrys have been toting Bluetooth for a hell of a long time, but emerging markets with high demand for low-cost, low-feature handsets could potentially stunt Bluetooth growth. If you’re in the market for some Bluetooth headsets, take a look over here.
Tag: forecastPage 2 of 4
Despite reports that UMA adoption rates are low, there’s still big bucks to be had, as a recent study by Infonetics Research is claiming that there will be $46 billion in the fixed-mobile convergence market by 2010. Beyond UMA handsets like the BlackBerry 8820, this market includes the network controllers the facilitate the Wi-Fi voice handoff, and residential gateways (like Hotspot@Home). The report is also forecasting a jump from 188,000 FMC subscribers in 2006 to 38.2 million in 2010. We can certainly expect the 8820 to be accounting for a decent chunk of that as it gains steam.
ABI Research just published a paper today that forecasts memory cards to have sold $7 billion this year, while headsets take second place in the mobile accessory market at $5 billion. The prime reason for this is that headsets are becoming more frequently bundled with devices, while memory cards still need to be bought separately. This shift isn’t a huge surprise, since mobile multimedia is gaining popularity and needs to address hardware bottlenecks. With high capacity SD cards becoming more widespread and the new UFS card gaining support, the memory market is looking pretty sweet.
With the summer drawing to a close, the numbers for the initial wave of iPhone sales are shaping up, and they’re pretty impressive. iSuppli is reporting 220,000 out of 2 million surveyed have bought one, which translates to a 1.8% grab of the market. On top of that, they’re forecasting 4.5 million before the end of the year and 30 million units in the public by 2011. Earlier, we were looking at a total of 6% market penetration, and with a start like this summers’, it’s entirely likely. Just to put these numbers in perspective…
“The two models of the iPhone on the market sold more than Research in Motion’s Blackberry series, the entire Palm portfolio and any individual smartphone model from Motorola, Nokia or Samsung.”
A recent ABI Research report is forecasting huge progress for Linux as the OS of choice for smartphones, claiming 31% of smartphones will be running it by 2012 thanks to a compound annual growth rate of 74%. Both Nokia and Palm have been flirting with Linux adoption for awhile. In fact, being more of an open product was one of the key changes Palm needed to embrace, according to a certain open letter. The report just goes to show that doing so early will get them on board with developers. Now, the BlackBerry’s fairly closed in terms of its OS and odds are it’s going to stay that way. How much of a lead could open source adoption give Palm over RIM?
The upcoming BlackBerry OS might be packing streaming video support, but the real moneymaking could be in video messaging. A recent report from ABI Research forecasts $17 billion in revenues from video messaging and telephony services by 2012. RIM’s still getting their feet wet in multimedia devices, and to be honest, video messaging seems a long way off. Incoming video streaming is a good start, but not only will the camera hardware have to evolve, but a network which reliably supports the data stream will also be necessary for outbound video messaging to happen. Even then, data-intensive activity like that isn’t exactly RIM’s style. The consumer angle for mobile video support is obvious (who doesn’t want a webcam on their phone?), but could video conferencing functionality make a camera more of a business-oriented feature on a BlackBerry?
