Symbian for Software Leaders: Principles of Successful Smartphone Development Projects

Chapter 1. At the heart of the smartphone revolution

The phenomenon of smartphones

Mobile phones are phenomenal. Today, one quarter of the earth's population owns a mobile phone. But only a few years ago, mobile phones were the stuff of science fiction. As such, mobile phones are arguably the most successful item of consumer electronics in history.

Mobile phones owe their phenomenal success to the fact that they satisfy some deep-seated human needs:

• First, they provide extra means for people to communicate – to explain, to speculate, to chat, to inform, to plan, to replan, to inquire, to instruct, to entreat, to woo, and to give thanks. We humans have a great deal to communicate; the amount of money we collectively spend on mobile phones shows that we are heartily grateful to them for increasing our communications power

• Second, mobile phones boost their owner's sense of safety. Their owners strongly appreciate that, in times of major or minor emergency, they can connect to people and services that are important to them

• And third, mobile phones have become veritable objects of fashion, which their owners can show off, complete with their customizable covers, chart-topping ringtones, wacky homespun messages, and personalized image backgrounds. We all like to be unique; our phones increasingly help us to stand out from the crowd.

Each new generation of mobile phone meets the above needs in ever richer ways, for example adding text messaging to complement voice calls (or predictive text input ...