The word “smartphone†has been around for a little while now. But what does it really mean? ABI described a smartphone as an "open, commercial operating system that supports third party applications." Going by this description, the iPhone would not be a smartphone. This of course stirred up a good deal of controversy over what constitutes the name smartphone.
Who exactly came up with the smartphone name? If you notice, most manufacturers actually stray away from using it. Palm is the only manufacturer that gives their phones this title, and in this case, all of their phones are smartphones. Cingular/ATT and Verizon are the only two carriers that also use the smartphone label.
So who actually uses this title? It's people like us that are the technology analysts, and it's the readers that use it in their personal blogs and everyday talk. I think that we as the technology community need to rethink this title. Either we need to create a unified definition, or stop using it altogether.
Related:ABI research call Apple’s iPhone “second-rate�
Why the ‘smartphone’ name is not so smart [via itworldcanada]
Microsoft’s been using the Smartphone name (with a capital “S”) for sometime as well. It is used to designate the phone platform that uses Windows Mobile on a traditional phone form factor without a touchscreen.
FWIW – my view is that a smartphone is a device that combines telephony and local data management beyond a basic phone book and diary/calendar.
To be honest, trying to apply these sorts of categories is becoming a little useless as the crossover between form factors and functions means that there’s more products in the grey areas between categories than in the actual categories.
Cheers
Anthony