Statistics can be used to suggest anything, although some just do not lie. Another matter that cannot lie is that smartphones are getting so smart they are leaving consumer-electronics devices for dead.

Smartphones make calls, SMS, MMS, you know, the basics. However these days they are also email machines, digital music tools, a digital camera, memory devices and personal-navigation device with an operating system. Predictions see smartphone sales in the U.S. will grow over 30% from last year to 37.4 million units.

Against the gadget competition, smartphones are on the up with the Consumer Electronics Association seeing (in 2009):

• Portable media players are forecast to slide 6.2%
• Digital cameras sales are expected to slip 8.6%
• Portable navigation devices projected sales to increase by only 15%
  (to just over 17.4 million units this year. Last year, sales jumped 73%)

Lucky I already have a smartphone I suppose. Not so good that I do use it as a navigation device (even though it tells me not to while driving). However from a personal note, the replacement of my SLR Digital Camera will never be taken over by a phone, unless maybe, when the SLR makes phone calls.

[via Wall Street Journal]