Smartphones a New Mass Medium

Smartphone subscribers are still a small slice of the mobile handset market, about 20 percent, inching towards 25 percent, by some estimates, and as high as 30 percent, by other estimates.

By 2013, predictions are that smartphone penetration in the U.S. market will be more than 50 percent, most seem to believe.

It is worth noting that 10-percent penetration is the point in the consumer electronics business when a popular device really accelerates, in terms of penetration, and smartphones are well past that point.

Also, to the extent that smartphones represent a new medium, and that nearly every huge mass medium has been sustained by advertising, it takes no genius at all to predict that advertising and marketing will be a big business in the future (click on image for larger view). 

To the extent that smartphones increasingly will be venues for rich media (video and audio) as well as text, it isn't unfair to describe smartphones as a new "medium," as the Internet, TV, radio and other media are.

Smartphones are "phones," it is true. But they also are a new media format. And hence, the foundation for a new media business.

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