Will 2006 be the year in which mobile "smartphones" hit critical mass? As the price gap between a decent
mid-range handset and an entry-level smartphone becomes thinner and thinner, the uptake of smartphones may indeed have
a banner year in 2006. The one thing I think will drive this adoption past gadgeteers and business professionals?
Mobile email. Sound simplistic enough, since email is fairly ubiquitous in all our lives, and it seems natural to have
an easy port (operative word: easy) of that function to every mobile phone sold. This means smartphone sales,
since email clients and access in standard handsets is very clunky at this time.Another thing that will increase smartphone sales to the critical masses soon (but not in 2006) will be built-in WiFi, which is just now starting to poke its head into nicer, higher-end smartphones. If you have WiFi in your smartphone and a Bluetooth keyboard, many laptop road warriors may not need their laptops everywhere they go. PDAs have been in this space for a while with WiFi capability, but a voice device with WiFi on board could be even sweeter to these folks.
