who will lead the smartphone market | Telecom Consumer Discussion Forums

Nokia only actually had a very good market share in europe and select areas of Asia, while within the US they were virtually unknown much like how motorola only came into europe late on in the dumb phone wars with things like the original Razor.

Their is a huge thought that Samsung will dominate but given the direction Samsung is heading and the deals they have made it would appear that Samsung will eventually look to shift away from making android based phones and push all their efforts behind Tizen – if that happens and when it happens is open for debate but Google is unlikely to stand in their way .. it’s not Google’s way to insist usage of X, Y or Z both operating systems are open source so it may be dual boot systems in the future.. all of which is speculation.

Apple will always be well placed unless they do something very stupid (think: iPad 3(overheating)/iPhone 4(aerial) issues) and fail to resolve it quickly but they likely dont even consider the others a threat to themselves, they make ‘art’ and put it out their (according to their mantra, not my own) Nokia under microsoft will continue to about break even but it’s saddening to see that nobody has given HTC a hope in hell.

HTC make these awesome phones, granted they have faults like for example the HTC One has a terrible camera and a woeful battery life but! and it’s a big but it was one of the first to produce a phone with optical image stabilisation, one of the first of last years flagships to include an IR blaster, 1080p display, front facing speakers and a very nice aluminium body yet they barely made profit (10 million) I would really like them to step up their game with the M8 the One was a fantastic phone with few faults but those faults put people off for whatever reason but the M8 is HTC’s make or break chance really – not their last of course but they have to do something worth doing.

Motorola will continue to bleed out, although likely at a lesser rate under Lenovo whom have done a great job with their Asian market, if they can translate it into the US they will recover but it wont be overnight and while the Motorola X is a great phone as is the Moto G it’s unlikely the saviour they need – no signs of entry in tablets either.

Sony is on the up, but there danger is getting caught in a design loop, they need to change it up a touch and maybe even consider going away from the very premium design and make something for the lesser markets of the world (lesser meaning emerging markets of course)

I see it as Apple, Sony, HTC, Samsung, LG pushing for spots with Nokia, Motorola living off the scraps but then you have to wonder what would happen if Oppo had a marketing budget in the billions like Samsung the N1 and Find 5 we’re both fantastic tho the N1 is a bit of a weird design in all honest, then you have ZTE pushing for entry into the US market also.. it’s really an open field at the moment and remember this is the first year ever that smart phones outsold dumb phones.. so it’s only really the start of things and now that the spec race is heating up you got to think about companies i rarely touched upon i.e LG can they keep up with the heat they have at the moment following the Flex and the G2 and will players like Sharp make a push into the market again ? they along with LG make a good deal of Apples screens.

Blackberry ? no way they will pull entirely out of the consumer sector very gradually and release low end devices to the consumer end as ‘run off’s’