March 25th, 2010 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Analysis & Editorial, Platforms: AndroidOS, Platforms: iOS, Platforms: Symbian, Platforms: Windows Mobile | No Comments »
Ed Achterberg from TelecomPaper held a keynote about the Dutch market for smartphones. It is clear that consumers are still not understanding the difference between hard- and firmware.
According to GfK, 900K smartphones have been sold on the Dutch market in 2009 and this number in increasing year-on-year. Keeping in mind that the Netherlands has 16 Million consumers, the featurephone (J2me) is still dominating.
Most smartphone owners live in the big cities. Featurephones are often purchased in the villages. Most smartphone owners are men and spend more money on their phones compared to owners of featurephones.
The most important factor in the device purchasing process is the price of the device and the contract with it. The average consumer is still not OS/device aware. In fact, only 25% look for a certain vendor or OS.
When comparing operating systems, Apple is the winner when it comes to the speed for setting up the phone. Android follows closely on iPhone OS while competitors Windows Mobile and Symbian are at the end of the line.
The role of the smartphone in the family is also changing and eating away PC time. Consumers only turn on the PC when they need to write a letter and perform other activities they can’t perform from their mobiles.
Achterberg argues that the only problem of Android is the fact it is an open OS. The beauty of a closed OS is the possibility of the vendor to control the quality and performance of the device and the software running on it.
