Are smartphones really a viable alternative to PDAs, ruggedised handheld computers and laptops in the mobile world? You might think so from the ever-increasing share they're grabbing of the handset market. Sharon Clancy reports

If you believe the hype, within a couple of years all mobile workers will be using smartphones. These devices will replace a whole plethora of established mobile equipment, including old-generation phone handsets, handheld terminals, PDAs, laptop computers and dedicated on-board navigation systems.

But can this be true? Will such small devices really become so universally capable that they'll sweep all before them? And in any case, what is a smartphone exactly? How does it differ from existing mobile phones - many of which already have an operating system of some kind, and are to at least some degree "smart"?

It all seems to be a matter of emphasis. A smartphone seems to be defined as a handset which, although intended primarily for voice communications, also has a significant data-handling capability designed to exploit the always-on connectivity of 2.5G and 3g mobile phone networks. As this mix of features answers the requirements of many companies when it comes to staying in touch with their mobile workforces, it is not hard to see why sales of smartphones are gaining popularity rapidly.

 

According to a report by analyst Ovum, the smartphone market grew from two million units in 2002 to 10 million in 2003, with forecasts of 25 million sales for 2004 and 130 million in 2007. Some analysts are even more bullish in their forecasts.

With such a huge market up for grabs, it is hardly surprising that competition is hotting up - and not just from the handset manufacturers. Symbian, the operating system which has dominated the PDA and phone world for the past five years and accounts for 85 per cent of the market, is being challenged by Microsoft, which has launched Microsoft Smartphone, a version of its Pocket PC 2003 operating system.

Applications are seen as crucial in advancing sales of smartphones. For many mobile workers, the chief benefit will be that they won't need separate devices for voice and data communications. They will be able to access emails, diaries and calendars on the move without investing in a PDA.

However, it is on-board navigation that experts predict will be a killer application in mobile working. It already drives many of the location based services that the network operators want to sell to consumers; and the Web-based services now being deployed offer the kind of sophisticated level of turn-by-turn navigation that has previously been available only to expensive on-board navigation systems.

Viable tool

So what's all the fuss about? Are smartphones really a viable tool for mobile workers? Or are they mainly a consumer toy, attractive to the network operators because they can sell more consumer-targeted services - sending digital pictures to friends, downloading music from the Web and keeping up to date with the football scores?

As is often the case, the answer depends on what tasks your mobile workers have to do. Symbian believes smartphones will have as great an impact on working lives as mobile telephony has already had in the market as a whole. This is because basically they will enable businesses to stay in touch with all their mobile workers, not just those issued with dedicated wireless devices such as notebooks or PDAs.

Indeed, some industry experts believe PDAs will gradually be sidelined by the smartphone revolution, ending up restricted to tasks such as digital signature capture and other applications requiring a large display or specialist accessories.

For sales forces and mobile workers wanting real-time access to corporate information and access to emails and diaries while on the move, smartphones will undoubtedly appeal. They're more portable than a laptop or PDA, yet like a PDA, have enough capacity and functionality to run local applications and store data while out of the area of network coverage.

Operating system

As with all many similar technology developments, smartphones represent a battleground for the operating system standards that support them. Despite Microsoft's entry into this market, its rival Symbian has an enormous lead, and retains a huge advantage in terms of the sheer number and type of mobile devices its OS already powers. Around 85 per cent of the mobile phones sold nowadays use Symbian OS, according to analysts Gartner.

Symbian was formed in 1998 when some of the leading mobile phone manufacturers teamed up with the software development wing of Psion to develop an operating system for feature-rich phones that could handle calendars, contacts, messaging, email and Web browsing, and integrate with virtually any enterprise information system.

There are now seven shareholders, with Psion and Finnish handset manufacturer Nokia having the largest shares. Motorola is the most notable absentee; it relinquished its stake last year, although it remains a licensee. Smartphones with Symbian OS include the Motorola A920 and A925 for network provider 3, Sendo X, Siemens SX-1, Sony Ericsson P800 and P900 smartphones and the Nokia 9200 Communicator range.

In February Symbian launched version 8.0. Licensees can now use a single core processor for telephony and application processing, which will lower the cost of manufacturing, and should make the Symbian OS more attractive for lower-cost, mid-tier phones. It also features improved multimedia, Java and device management capabilities to help operators and business exploit the applications available with 2.5G and 3G networks and the OMA SyncML s1.1 open standard. This aims to make it easier to manage and configure smartphones and applications remotely.

Symbian claims one of its advantages is that the same OS can be used for smartphone or PDA functions. Devices using it include compact phones with keypads, mid-size phones with larger screens and stylus input, and clamshell style communicators with a keyboard. Companies can thus deploy applications on a handset that are best suited to specific groups of workers. Most mobile workers already know how to use a mobile telephone, the company points out, so using the same device to access data services will not be too daunting or, from the operating company viewpoint, costly in terms of training.

Symbian's future, however, is under a cloud, following an agreement in March by Psion shareholders to sell the company's 31.1 per cent stake to Nokia. Nokia will pay £93.5 million on completion, plus 0.84p per Symbian-equipped device sold during 2004 and 2005. The sale needs approval from the European regulators and theoretically gives Nokia a 63.3 per cent stake in Symbian.

Other shareholders can increase their stakes proportionately, and Ericsson has vowed to do this, taking the combined Ericsson and Sony Ericsson holding from 19 to 27.6 per cent. However, this would still leave Nokia with a dominant 46.7 per cent stake.

Jessica Figueras, a senior analyst with Ovum, says it is this proposed power shift within Symbian that is the biggest threat to the platform's long-term future, not the increase challenge from Microsoft, which by 2007 is predicted to power 22 million smartphones (compared with 100 million with Symbian).

Figueras says the handset manufacturers are already finding it hard to agree on whether a standard platform for application development is more or less important than the ability to differentiate their products from each other. "This long-running tension is creating dangerous fragmentation in the Symbian platform, which will seriously affect its chances of staying relevant," says Figueras. "Faced with fragmentation, mobile developers will almost certainly focus their efforts on one or two platforms which allow them to address a large audience with the minimum of effort."

That may mean closer collaboration with the network operators who are becoming more influential in the handset market; and that could ultimately play out to Microsoft's advantage. Microsoft, for example, has already teamed up with Orange, Motorola and Samsung. Check out our Product Evaluation feature to find out more about its smartphone operating system.

Integration

Many of the problems of integrating mobile devices with corporate systems also apply to smartphones, of course, which middleware developers such as Intuwave are beginning to recognise. Intuwave has launched Wireless Network Operating System (WNOS) for Smartphones, which it claims is the world's first such system, and is designed to make it easy for users to integrate Symbian smartphones into enterprise IT systems via Intuwave's m-Network. Symbian software on the smartphone links to Java software running on the enterprise server.

Not everything is rosy in the smartphone garden. There are still issues on unreliable and dropped connections, high latency bandwidth and company firewalls, to name a few. Smartphones will not be practicable for all tasks. However, as numbers increase and costs fall, a familiar debate looks set to emerge. But this time around it will not be PDAs versus ruggedised handhelds, but PDAs versus smartphones.

Navigation: the killer smartphone application?

Navigation is often described as a location-based service, chiefly because elements of navigation are required by the "classic" early LBS services - those for instance that allow consumers to find the nearest cinema, bank and so on. However, suppliers are now realising that by adding turn-by-turn directions, they can offer a serious business-oriented product with appeal for delivery drivers and other mobile workers. Such users can harness navigation systems to increase productivity by saving time and keeping drivers more closely to schedules.

This is partly why digital mapping and navigation specialists are now rushing to get navigation applications on to the market - although they may struggle to catch up with some of the early players, who include names such as Telcontar, Telmap and Webraska. These are among suppliers who have already deployed some very capable navigation, tracking and telematics systems.

Basically, such companies tend to use technology which collates the geographical and traffic data at a central point and then sends the resultant "package" of information to the handset via a remote server. This is different from "conventional" on-board navigation systems, which historically have used data and programming that are resident in the vehicle. Smartphone-based navigation involves downloading information as you go - which may add air time cost, but saves the investment in a dedicated system.

What about the transmission delay? The suppliers say this isn't a problem, since data streaming from the server means that users don't have to wait for an entire journey to be downloaded before embarking on their journey; voice directions start as soon as the first data packet is downloaded to the handset. Once downloaded, routes can be viewed countless times even while the user is disconnected.

Jonathan Klinger, Webraska's vice-president of marketing, says smartphones will transform the market for navigation services. "Users will get a similar experience to on-board systems at a fraction of the cost. The bonus is that they also get real-time traffic updates, plus integration of points of interest." Klinger says there is no need to wait for phones that combine GPS location with cell ID; users can start with the cell-ID system, then buy Bluetooth-enabled GPS transceivers to add that capability.

Webraska's SmartZone Navigation Suite is built round its IbDN (Internet-based Distributed Navigation) technology. There are several versions. The SmartZone navigation suite for smartphones and PDAs is an off-the-shelf application that combines on- and off-board navigation. It includes a "zoomable" map and a facility for re-routing drivers automatically if they take a wrong turn, without the need for them to be connected to the server.

Users can access the service in several ways - via the company's own service, through a Webraska-hosted server, or through the network provider. If you are using server-hosted data, the data is always up-to-date and can include real-time information on traffic or points of interest.

Webraska has also developed a navigation plug-in for fleet applications that run on PDAs and smartphones, which includes a customisable graphical user interface.

Telcontar uses RMF, a binary data format specifically designed for location-based services. A 100GB GDF file ends up as a 10GB to 20GB RMF file, and because the data is compacted rather than compressed, there is no need to uncompress it when it arrives on the handset - speeding up response times.

Motorola is using Telcontar's Rich Map Engine in its Viamoto LBS application, which provides real-time turn-by-turn directions, guidance and fast dynamic re-routing based on current traffic conditions. Telcontar also supplies routing engine technology for Trafficmaster's Smartnav.

Telmap's Polaris application is based on its Andromeda client-server system, which provides mapping, searching, route planning and instructions to any Java-enabled mobile phone.