Even
before we all jumped from normal phones to smart phones and got busy with
making lives simpler, things changed in a brisk and we all now are in an era
where anything and everything is available in our finger tips. Did you know in
this run from basic phone to a smart phone era there was a kind of phone that
brightened and is now fading away? So let me quickly explain you two types of
phones that acquired market first, these were featured phones and smart phones.
Basically
featured phones are phones that cannot run OS or applications but will have
their own features that support emailing, browsing and other additional
activities apart from communication. Featured phones were also low cost phones
that hit the mass and acquired the market, Until recent past featured phone
still held about 56% of market due to low cost. This could not remain same or
increasing for featured phones.
Nokia Asha 501-A featured phone with touch screen
Samsung Phone-A smart phone
On
the other hand Smart phones are phones that can run different Operating
systems, run applications and perform several other functions. Smartphones
initially hit only the high end society due to the cost and other factors. But
smart phones made a break through by introducing themselves to mass with low
cost as featured phones and acquired complete market in no time.
In 2011, feature phones accounted for 60
percent of the mobile telephones in the United States and 70 percent of mobile
phones sold worldwide. In 2013, smartphones outsold feature phones for the
first time, accounting for 51.8 percent of mobile phone sales in the second
quarter of that year. A survey of 4,001 Canadians by Media Technology Monitor
in fall 2012, reported that 83 per cent of the Anglophone population owned a
cellphone. About two thirds of the mobile phone owners polled said they had a
smartphone and the other third had feature phones or non-smartphones.
Although
a feature phone is a low-end device and a smartphone a high-end one, there is
no standard way of distinguishing them.
Smartphone and feature phone are not mutually exclusive categories. A
complication in distinguishing between smartphones and feature phones is that
over time the capabilities of new models of feature phones can increase to
exceed those of phones that had been promoted as smartphones in the past.
Because technology changes rapidly, what was a smartphone ten years ago may be
considered only a feature phone today. For example, today's feature phones
typically also serve as a personal digital assistant (PDA) and portable media
player and have capabilities such as cameras, touchscreen, GPS navigation,
Wi-Fi and mobile broadband internet access, and even mobile gaming.
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