According to research by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), navigation, email and internet access are top of the feature must-haves for new cellphone purchases today.  In fact, they believe that the demand for advanced functionality will drive more buyers to choose smartphones over more traditional handsets; CEA estimates that sales of smartphones accounted for 15-percent of total units shipped in 2007, a three-fold increase in three years, and that factory-to-dealer sales will exceed $8bn in 2008.

“While smartphones were once mostly for business use, they are becoming mainstream, as new wireless services like navigation and Internet access are included in more handsets.  These devices will slowly but surely supplant standard handsets”Steve Koenig, Senior Manager of Industry Analysis, CEA

CEA believe the market for feature-rich handsets is far from saturated; only 11-percent of those they talked to said they owned a smartphone, and they predict this number will rise significantly over the coming year.  Forty percent of American adults surveyed stated they would be looking to buy a new handset within the year.

The rise of the smartphone is coinciding with a delineation blurring, prompted in no small part by the genre-straddling iPhone.  While ostensibly not a smartphone in the traditional sense - lacking out-of-the-box third-party applications and enterprise support for email and synchronization - it nonetheless is far more powerful than typical consumer handsets.