Mobile Phone

A mobile phone (also called mobile, cellular phone, cell phone or handphone) is an
electronic device used for full duplex two-way radio telecommunications over a cellular
network of base stations known as cell sites. Mobile phones differ from cordless telephones,
which only offer telephone service within limited range through a single base station attached
to a fixed land line, for example within a home or an office.

A mobile phone allows its user to make and receive telephone calls to and from the public
telephone network which includes other mobiles and fixed line phones across the world. It
does this by connecting to a cellular network owned by a mobile network operator. A key
feature of the cellular network is that it enables seamless telephone calls even when the user
is moving around wide areas via a process known as handoff or handover.

In addition to being a telephone, modern mobile phones also support many additional
services, and accessories, such as SMS (or text) messages, email, Internet access, gaming,
Bluetooth, infrared, camera, MMS messaging, MP3 player, radio and GPS. Low-end mobile
phones are often referred to as feature phones, whereas high-end mobile phones that offer
more advanced computing ability are referred to as smartphones.

The first handheld cellular phone was demonstrated by Martin Cooper of Motorola in 1973,
using a handset weighing in at two kilos. In the year 1990, 12.4 million people worldwide
had cellular subscriptions. By the end of 2009, only 20 years later, the number of mobile
cellular subscriptions worldwide reached approximately 4.6 billion, 370 times the 1990
number, penetrating the developing economies and reaching the bottom of the economic
pyramid.

Mobile phones in society

Market share

The world's largest individual mobile operator is China Mobile with over 500 million mobile
phone subscribers. The world's largest mobile operator group by subscribers is UK based
Vodafone. There are over 600 mobile operators and carriers in commercial production
worldwide. Over 50 mobile operators have over 10 million subscribers each, and over 150
mobile operators have at least one million subscribers by the end of 2009 (source wireless
intelligence).

LG
Source Date Nokia Samsung RIM Sony Ericsson Others
Electronics

IDC Q1/2010 36.6% 21.8% 9.2% 3.6% 3.6% 25.3%

Gartner Q1/2010 35.0% 20.6% 8.6% 3.4% 3.1% 29.3%

Other manufacturers include Apple Inc., Audiovox (now UTStarcom), CECT, HTC
Corporation, Fujitsu, Kyocera, Mitsubishi Electric, NEC, Panasonic, Palm, Matsushita,
Pantech Wireless Inc., Philips, Qualcomm Inc., Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), Sagem,
Sanyo, Sharp, Sierra Wireless, SK Teletech, T&A Alcatel, Huawei, Trium, Toshiba and
Vidalco. There are also specialist communication systems related to (but distinct from)
mobile phones.

Feature Phone and Smartphone

Feature phone is any mobile phone that is not a smartphone or PDA phone. Feature phones
have proprietary operating system (OS) firmware. If they support third-party software, it is
only via a limited interface such as Java or BREW.

Compared to software for smartphones, Java or BREW software for feature phones is often
less powerful, less integrated with other features of the phone, and less integrated into the
main user interface of the phone.

This is changing, as newer versions of Java and BREW allow software to be more powerful
and integrate with more features of the phone, although the difference is still present,
especially on the interface side. While third-party smartphone software is a "first-class
citizen" on the phone, third-party Java or BREW software is usually restricted to a special
"applications" section of the interface.

Smartphone
A smartphone is a mobile phone that offers more advanced computing ability and
connectivity than a contemporary basic 'feature phone'. Smartphones and feature phones may
be thought of as handheld computers integrated within a mobile telephone, but while most
feature phones are able to run applications based on platforms such as Java ME, a smartphone
allows the user to install and run more advanced applications based on a specific platform.
Smartphones run complete operating system software providing a platform for application
developers.

Growth in demand for advanced mobile devices boasting powerful processors, abundant
memory, larger screens and open operating systems has outpaced the rest of the mobile phone
market for several years. According to a study by ComScore, in 2010 over 45.5 million
people in the United States owned smartphones and it is the fastest growing segment of the
mobile phone market, which comprised 234 million subscribers in the United States.

History

Early years

The first smartphone was called Simon; it was designed by IBM in 1992 and shown as a
concept product that year at COMDEX, the computer industry trade show held in Las Vegas,
Nevada. It was released to the public in 1993 and sold by BellSouth. Besides being a mobile
phone, it also contained a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail,
send and receive fax, and games. It had no physical buttons to dial with. Instead customers
used a touch-screen to select phone numbers with a finger or create facsimiles and memos
with an optional stylus. Text was entered with a unique on-screen "predictive" keyboard. By
today's standards, the Simon would be a fairly low-end product; however, its feature set at the
time was incredibly advanced.

The Nokia Communicator line was the first of Nokia's smartphones starting with the Nokia
9000, released in 1996. This distinctive palmtop computer style smartphone was the result of
a collaborative effort of an early successful and expensive Personal digital assistant (PDA) by
Hewlett Packard combined with Nokia's bestselling phone around that time, and early
prototype models had the two devices fixed via a hinge. The Nokia 9210 was the first color
screen Communicator model which was the first true smartphone with an open operating
system; the 9500 Communicator was also Nokia's first cameraphone Communicator and
Nokia's first WiFi phone. The 9300 Communicator was the third dimensional shift into a
smaller form factor, and the latest E90 Communicator includes GPS. The Nokia
Communicator model is remarkable for also having been the most expensive phone model
sold by a major brand for almost the full lifespan of the model series, easily 20% and
sometimes 40% more expensive than the next most expensive smartphone by any major
manufacturer. In 1997 Ericsson released the concept phone GS88, the first device labelled as
'smartphone'.

Rise of Symbian, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry

In 2000 Ericsson released the touchscreen smartphone R380, the first device to use the new
Symbian OS. It was followed up by P800 in 2002, the first camera smartphone.

In 2001 Microsoft announced its Windows CE Pocket PC OS would be offered as "Microsoft

In early 2002 Handspring released the Palm OS Treo smartphone, utilizing a full keyboard
that combined wireless web browsing, email, calendar, and contact organizer with mobile
third-party applications that could be downloaded or synced with a computer.

In 2002 RIM released the first BlackBerry which was the first smartphone optimized for
wireless email use and had achieved a total customer base of 32 million subscribers by
December 2009.

In 2007 Nokia launched the Nokia N95 which integrated a wide range of features into a
consumer-oriented smartphone: GPS, a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash,
3G and wi-fi connectivity and TV-out. In the next few years these features would become
standard on high-end smartphones.

The rise of the iPhone and Android

Later in 2007, Apple Inc. introduced its first iPhone. It was initially expensive, costing $500
for the cheapest model. It was one of the first smartphones to be mainly controlled through
its touchscreen, the others being the LG Prada and the HTC Touch (also released in 2007). It
was the first mobile phone to use a multi-touch interface. It featured a web browser that was
much better than its competitors - Ars Technica described it as "far superior to anything that
we had ever used prior." At the time of the launch of the iPhone it was arguable whether it
was actually a smartphone as the first generation lacked the ability to officially use third-
party applications. A process called jailbreaking emerged quickly to provide unofficial third-
party applications. The first iPhone didn't have 3G support due to the lack of 3G network
coverage in the United States at the time.

Android, a cross platform OS for smartphones was released in 2008. Android is an Open
Source platform backed by Google, along with major hardware and software developers
(such as Intel, HTC, ARM, Motorola and eBay, to name a few), that form the Open Handset
Alliance. The first phone to use the Android OS was the HTC Dream, branded for
distribution by T-Mobile as the G1. The software suite included on the phone consists of
integration with Google's proprietary applications, such as Maps, Calendar, and Gmail, as
well as Google's Chrome Lite full HTML web browser. Third-party apps are available via
the Android Market, including both free and paid apps.

In July 2008 Apple introduced its second generation iPhone which had a lower upfront price
and 3G support. It also created the App Store with both free and paid applications. The App
Store can deliver smartphone applications developed by third parties directly to the iPhone or
iPod Touch over wifi or cellular network without using a PC to download. The App Store has
been a huge success for Apple and by April 2010 hosted more than 185,000 applications.
The App Store hit three billion application downloads in early January 2010.

Other platforms are able to download apps from any website, rather than only from a single
app store; however, other companies have more recently lauched their own app stores. RIM
launched its app store, BlackBerry App World, in April 2009. Nokia launched its Ovi Store in
May 2009. Palm launched its Palm App Catalog in June 2009. Microsoft launched its
Windows Marketplace for Mobile in October 2009.

In January 2010, Google launched Nexus One using its Android OS. Although Android OS
has multi-touch capabilities, Google initially removed that feature from Nexus One, but it
was added through a firmware update on February 2, 2010.

Operating systems
There are multiple mobile operating systems currently available. Currently the biggest
selling Smartphone operating system is Symbian OS though it is less recognizable as a
separate platform than some of its smaller rivals including Android, Blackberry OS, iOS and
Windows Mobile. Several mobile operating systems including Android and iOS are based
off Unix and Linux.

Smartbook

A smartbook is a concept of a mobile device that falls between smartphones and netbooks,
delivering features typically found in smartphones (always on, all-day battery life, 3G
connectivity, GPS) in a slightly larger device with a full keyboard. Smartbooks will tend to
be designed to work with online applications.

Smartbooks use the ARM processor, which gives them much greater battery life than a
netbook which uses a traditional Intel x86 processor. They are likely to be sold initially
through mobile network operators, like mobile phones are today, along with a wireless data
plan.

Open source development

The open source culture has penetrated the smartphone market in a way. There have been
attempts to open source both hardware and software of a smartphone. Most notable project
from open hardware development is most likely the Neo FreeRunner smartphone developed
by Openmoko. Lately, the Google Android OS is a popular open source mobile operating
system. Nokia has an initiative around Symbian too, which has open-sourced all Symbian
smartphone code in February 2010. Nokia has developed a Linux-based open-source system
Maemo. Later Maemo was merged with Intel's project Moblin to form MeeGo operating
system.