More U.S. Mobile Internet Than PC Users by 2010?

"By 2010, the number one way U.S. users will interact with Web is through the phone, not the PC," says Rodney Mason, Moosylvania CMO. That would be a huge change, more in line with what forecasters have been predicting about Internet access methods in the developing world.

If it turns out the mobile device becomes the most-common means of access, the way Web applications and services are designed also will start to change.

Smart phones and mobile broadband networks should lead to "TV everywhere" services, for example. And that could break the hold multichannel video services have on the delivery of video.

Sales of smart phones matter for several reasons, among them the creation of new markets for mobile applications. Handset suppliers and mobile service providers have a huge stake as well.

Nearly a quarter of all handsets sold in the U.S. market during the fourth quarter of 2008 were smart phones, up from 12 percent of all phone sales in the same quarter of 2007, according to the NPD Group. But the rate of growth seems to have slowed because of the recession.

IDC forecasts a U.S. smart phone growth rate of between four and five percent for 2009, a far cry from last year’s 68 percent growth, and Stela Bokun, Pyramid Research analyst, warns that slowdowns in Europe and other markets could negatively affect service provider data revenue growth.

'If smart phones do not get cheaper and if mobile customers remain the only ones bearing the risks related to currency fluctuations in individual markets, uptake will suffer in a prolonged recession and post-recession data services revenue will take longer to recover," she says.

Of the 263 million new handsets sold in Europe in 2008, 14 percent were smartphones. These 36 million units accounted for roughly 24.4 percent of all smart phones sold globally that year, Bokun says.

"We expect handset unit sales in Western Europe to fall 20 percent in 2009; the situation is even worse in Central and Eastern Europe, where new handset sales are expected to fall 25 percent this year," she says.

Globally, Nokia leads in sales of new smart phones, while Research in Motion is second and Apple is third.

Nokia sold 18,441,000 smart phones in the 2nd quarter of 2009, and RIM sold 7,678,900 unit, while Apple sold 5.4 million devices.