December 9th, 2008 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Smartphones & Tablets | No Comments »
The smartphone market seems to be booming with the success of devices like the HTC Touch Diamond, Nokia N96 and of course the Apple iPhone (though I am still not convinced it is a real smartphone). Yet, the EU is thinking about raising import taxes on them.
This means two things. The first is obvious, smartphones will have an import tac of up to 14% and so get more expensive for consumers. The second thing is that the “smartphone” will finally be defined.
Personally I regard smartphones as phones that are fully adjustable (though by third party software), allow multitasking and copy/paste actions. In my eyes this makes a N96 a smartphone and the iPhone a dumbphone. That is still personal though.
The reasons for raising these import taxes are unknown yet, but the Eicta (Motorola, Apple, SonyEricsson and others) group is already lobbying to get the bill disapproved.
