Mobile devices matter to our industry more than ever. We see it in the number of camera viewer applications and alarm system control applications that are becoming available on today's smartphones. It's been said by industry leaders like Honeywell's President Ron Rothman, who told First Alert dealers that the consumer is driving control to mobile devices (see more of SD&I's report on last week's First Alert conference).
So, what's happening with mobile devices? Who's winning the battle?
Clearly at this point, it's a two-player market. There is Apple with the iPhone and RIM (a Canadian company) with the Blackberry. Each has roughly 1/5th of the world market of smartphones (17.1 percent for Apple's iPhone, 20.8 percent for Blackberry according to Wired Magazine). Microsoft, the early dominant player, has seen a drop in market share, from 11 percent in 2008 to around 7 percent, despite the fact that Microsoft had the early operating system platform. I don't see this Microsoft trend turning around, to be honest.
Google is the new up-start in the mobile devices space with its Android operating system, and if Google's other successes in Gmail, GoogleMaps, the search engine, and Reader are any indication, this company will become a real factor in the business of cell phones. Don't forget Palm (as in the old PalmPilot, an early player in the smartphone market), which seems to generate conflicting market share reports. IDC put them as rising to 13.4 percent of marketshare, but other reports say the company has steadily lost market share for 2 years and is now down to roughly the same level of Microsoft's OS. One thing is for sure: Google is small but getting the buzz; Palm is reinventing itself but still not getting consumers' attention the way the company did in prior years.
So now the question becomes a matter of how do smart phones affect the security industry. Here's my read on the situation:
-Geoff