The rapid adoption and evolution of smartphones has led to modern lifestyles and social and economic changes. The history of smartphones, the use of different operating systems and applications, and the application of artificial intelligence technology have significantly changed our daily lives. The proliferation of smartphones has become more than just a means of communication; it has impacted our entire lives and will continue to make our lives more convenient through various technological innovations.
In 2024, a survey showed that Koreans spent an average of 4 hours and 51 minutes on their smartphones. This is not surprising given our modern lifestyle. In fact, if you take the bus or subway to get to school, you’ll see most people on their phones. Just five years ago, this was rare, but with the rapid adoption of smartphones, you can now see people using them everywhere. Smartphone penetration in South Korea is already over 95%. Considering that the iPhone was first released in Korea in 2009, this shows how quickly smartphones have become widespread.
The rapid adoption of smartphones is not just a result of technological innovation. It’s also due to the fact that various features have been added to meet the needs and wants of users, which has greatly increased the convenience of their lives. Smartphones are no longer just a means of communication; they have become an integral part of our lives. For example, smartphones allow us to find the information we need anytime, anywhere, and through a variety of applications, we can easily handle daily activities such as financial transactions, shopping, education, and more. The development of smartphones has also brought about social and economic changes. For example, the introduction of mobile payment systems has made it easier to make payments without the need for cash or cards, which has been a game changer for small businesses.
In the following sections, we’ll explain how smartphones came to be, what the operating systems that make up smartphones are, and what they do. In 1992, IBM developed the first smartphone, Simon, and introduced it to the market in 1994. It was a PDA with the functionality of a cell phone, providing users with the ability to make and receive calls, as well as fax, email, maps, and news. Since then, several manufacturers have introduced PDAs with cell phone functionality. A classic example of such a PDA is the 9000 Communicator, introduced by Nokia in 1996, which established the smartphone as a type of PDA. In Japan in 1999, smartphones released by NTT DoCoMo became extremely popular, marking the first time a large number of users entered the smartphone market nationwide. Similarly, in the United States, smartphones based on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile and BlackBerry became popular in the mid-2000s, and in Europe, smartphones based on Nokia’s Symbian became popular by the late 2000s. This changed in January 2007 when Apple introduced the iPhone, the first smartphone with multi-touch technology, to the market. The iPhone revolutionized the smartphone market, as many smartphones on the market at the time used stylus pens or keypads as input devices. The following year, the first smartphone based on Google’s Android was introduced to the market by HTC, followed by a string of Android-based smartphones from various manufacturers. As Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android dominated the market, Nokia decided to use Microsoft’s Windows Phone as its operating system instead of Symbian.
Throughout the history of smartphones, various operating systems have come and gone. The operating system is the software that makes the device work most efficiently for the user’s convenience, and the functions and features of smartphones vary greatly depending on the operating system. Windows Mobile, Symbian, iOS, and Android are all operating systems for smartphones. However, currently, only iOS and Android are widely used as operating systems for smartphones, and this dominance has been in place since 2012. In the following paragraphs, we’ll briefly explain how these two operating systems differ from each other.
First, Android, developed by Google, is a Linux-based mobile operating system that was first released to the market in 2008 with HTC’s Dream smartphone. Android’s biggest feature is that it’s an open-source operating system, meaning that anyone can use it, which has led to a wide ecosystem of Android-based smartphones from Samsung, LG, and other manufacturers. Apple’s iOS, on the other hand, is a mobile operating system developed for Apple products, including the iPhone and iPad, and was released to the market with the iPhone in 2007. In 2008, Apple introduced the App Store to iOS to make it easier for users to download applications, which encouraged many developers to create a variety of applications. Since then, many other operating systems have adopted similar application stores, and they have become an integral part of smartphone operating systems.
Smartphones can do much more than traditional cell phones through the various applications downloaded from application stores. As of 2024, Android’s Google Play and Apple’s App Store had over 4 million and nearly 1.7 million applications, respectively. These applications allow smartphone users to access social networking services (SNS), book movies or hotels, access mobile financial services, and much more. Smartphones provide users with the services they need in their daily lives, and new applications are being developed every day to expand their use. Take the financial sector for example. Smartphone users can use applications developed by various banks to inquire about their accounts, transfer money, and other services without visiting a bank branch. In August 2015, technology was also developed to allow smartphones to be used as a payment method. Since then, Samsung Electronics has popularized the technology through an application called Samsung Pay, which allows users to make on-site payments with their smartphones instead of credit cards. In 2023, more than $4 billion in total payments were made through Samsung Pay globally, confirming the potential of smartphones as a payment method.
After the first iPhone was introduced to the market in 2007, the smartphone market experienced rapid growth. The global smartphone market grew from 122.32 million units in 2007 to more than 6.9 billion units in 2023. This rapid growth has been fueled by constant technological competition among smartphone manufacturers, which has resulted in a flood of new products every year from a variety of manufacturers that improve upon existing features and add new ones. One example of this is the improvement in smartphone cameras. The first iPhone in 2007 had a rear-facing camera with only 2 megapixels, while the recently announced iPhone 15 has a 48-megapixel rear camera and a 12-megapixel front-facing camera. As the capabilities of smartphone cameras have improved, many people have begun to use smartphones instead of digital cameras to take photos and videos, and as a result, smartphones have replaced the capabilities of digital cameras. Apple, which introduces new iPhones to the market every year, unveiled Siri, a voice recognition service that functions as a personal assistant, with the iPhone 4S in 2011. Siri provides simple functions such as searching for information and sending messages at the user’s command. This was the first application of artificial intelligence to smartphones, and since then, other manufacturers, including Samsung Electronics, have provided voice recognition services that, like Siri, perform user commands. Voice recognition is not the only example of AI applied to smartphones. Recently, when you take a photo with your smartphone, the AI built into the smartphone recognizes the subject, analyzes what kind of photo you are taking, and optimizes the results of the photo. One of the most prominent examples of AI in smartphones is Google’s Smart Assistant. More than just a voice recognition service, Google’s Smart Assistant learns your life patterns to provide you with personalized information and works with Google’s other AI services to help you perform various activities.
The evolution of smartphones is more than just a technological advancement; it’s changing the way we live. By 2023, there will be more than 5 billion smartphone users worldwide, representing 60% of the world’s population. That’s how many people smartphones are impacting. In the future, smartphones will continue to make our lives more convenient through various technological innovations. It’s interesting to note how new technologies are impacting our lives through the evolution of smartphones. New technology has always changed the way we live, and smartphones are at the center of that change.
