A smartphone is a device that combines a phone with a variety of features, popularized by Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. Smartphones have become an essential part of our lives, replacing many other electronic devices.
It’s the age of the smartphone. It’s no longer awkward to see people staring at a small square of liquid crystal with nothing to do. In 2023, South Korea’s smartphone penetration rate is expected to be around 95%, one of the highest in the world. This means that 95% of the population will own a smartphone.
Despite the immense popularity of smartphones, it’s not easy to answer the question of what a smartphone is. Even the English Wikipedia vaguely describes a smartphone as a cell phone with “increased computing power and connectivity over feature phones”. What is a smartphone and why is it so popular?
The first device to use the word smartphone was Ericsson’s GS88 model in 1997. However, the closest commercially available device to a smartphone is a PDA phone, which is a PDA with phone functionality. A PDA is a handheld computer with a relatively large screen, often with a touch screen. The introduction of PDA phones gave us a glimpse into the future of cell phones, as they were able to do much more than just make calls. However, when PDA phones were first released, their slow communication speeds, lack of portability, and high prices kept them from becoming widely popular and limited to a select group of people.
Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android are arguably the two smartphones that have popularized smartphones today. Prior to their release, Nokia’s Symbian, Research in Motion’s BlackBerry, and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile led the smartphone market based on PDA phones. Nokia was the world’s No. 1 cell phone maker, Research in Motion specialized in the business sector with email, and Windows Mobile had its own market based on its Windows-like interface.
However, with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007, the smartphone ecosystem underwent a major transformation. First released in January 2007, the iPhone sold more than 3.3 million units in its first year. Unlike traditional PDA phones, the iPhone gave users less freedom to use the device, but it succeeded in maximizing the user experience within the limited freedom. Around the same time, Google acquired Android, a smartphone platform company, and released the platform, Android, as open source without a license fee, to the delight of carriers and handset manufacturers. Phone makers were happy to have a well-built, Google-backed operating system available for free. Carriers were also happy to sell Android phones because of the Android Market’s revenue structure. Whereas Apple’s App Store takes 7 percent from application developers and 3 percent from Apple, the Android Market takes 7 percent from developers and 3 percent from carriers. With their support, Android has been able to grow at a rapid pace, reaching over 50% of the total smartphone market share in the second half of 2011, and according to the latest data from 2024, Android dominates the global mobile operating system market with a share of about 69.88%.
The iPhone and Android gave rise to what most people recognize today as the “smartphone with a unified operating system and a wide range of applications”. If you can utilize various applications based on computing power and connectivity that is better than feature phones, and these activities are a major part of your device usage, we can call it a smartphone.
And it is the utilization of these various applications that contributed to the explosive popularity of smartphones. In addition to the basic phone and computer functions, smartphones have become a convergence device, with a hardware foundation of GPS sensors, gravity and acceleration sensors, portability, a unified operating system, and a combination of various applications that collectively provide a user experience that was previously available on individual devices. It’s the rise of the digital MacGyver. This has resulted in the traditional MP3 player, navigation, PMP market, electronic dictionaries, and even handheld games and compact cameras being cannibalized by smartphone sales.
The disruptive power of the smartphone as a convergence device is based on the cell phone. Global cell phone penetration is expected to reach 68% by 2023. This means that 54% of the world’s population will own a smartphone, and approximately 4.3 billion people will access the mobile internet via a smartphone. In the modern world, everyone has a cell phone, and this has a huge impact because it integrates devices that were previously separate. Before I joined the army, I carried an MP3 player, an electronic dictionary, a laptop, and a cell phone, but now I don’t need any of these devices because I have a smartphone. In a short period of time, it has changed the electronics market and people’s lives.
If we look at the actions of Apple, Google, and Samsung, which are leading the market, we can predict the future of smartphones, which are aiming for a comprehensive convergence device.
Google is piloting the Google Wallet service. It’s Google’s attempt to combine two things that everyone needs under one system: a phone and a wallet. It’s Google’s attempt to make smartphones even more integral to people’s lives. Apple, on the other hand, is focusing on cloud computing. Siri, the iPhone’s voice recognition system, doesn’t process voice on the device itself, but rather uses a cloud service that processes voice input from the device in a data center in California. It’s also been 13 years since Apple acquired cloud file system company Dropbox and launched its iCloud service. This shows Apple’s continued interest and investment in cloud computing. As the technology evolves, with sensitive input, smartphones have become more of a “producer” of information, as opposed to a “consumer” of information. It will be interesting to see how smartphones will continue to evolve beyond convergence devices, based on increasingly advanced technologies.
