But as the author cleverly notes, what about when you need to use your smartphone, as well, a phone and still want the navigation component? I see this particular scenario, while something that may come up on occasion, as rather shaky ground to base the future of an industry on, not to mention, there’s other factors to keep in mind.

Seeing as how these devices are, for all intents and purposes intended solely for use while driving, we have to look at tendencies in the automobile industry. And I expect navigation systems, to increasingly become standard, cutting into a huge portion of the standalone PND market, which as noted above, is also being threatened by the smartphone. So unless they come down dramatically in price or find additional relevancy in our lives, I have to agree that their days are numbered.

[image via mujitra]

This builds on the several key drivers of the overall market as consumer demand for ease of transaction, mobility, convenience and immediacy continues to grow. As more banks and retailers get on board it opens more doors for everything from traditional real world purchases to virtual buys.

In the US, the key component appears to be the widespread adoption of the smartphone and all of the functionality that comes along with it. Nokia enters tis emerging sector at a time when there are few competitors, but other players do exist – big names like Mastercard and Facebook and lesser-knowns like Boku and Zong – all trying to establish a universal platform. And this universality will be essential in determining who rises to the top, as developers look to seamlessly push their service across multiple platforms and handsets.

In the meantime, I’m curious to see how banks and retailers respond. Will they go for the appeal of reaching the largest audience and leverage every system or will they back a winner and negotiate lower transaction fees? This will be an interesting show to watch.

[image via whiteafrican]

As Fast Company reports, the industry will “most probably see Office productivity apps being included on cellphones made by Nokia, which is the world’s largest maker of cellphones, albeit not necessarily the world’s hottest-selling smartphone maker.” RIM currently holds that distinction.

Microsoft plans to implement its new Mobile Office software in new Nokia smartphones, a move reminiscent of the particulars within the fine print of the Yahoo! agreement. Under that contract, Microsoft’s new Bing search engine would power all Yahoo searches, in exchange for Yahoo! keeping 88% of the ad revenue generated on those searches.

This announcement sheds further light on Microsoft’s new strategy in the technology market. Rather than trying to compete head-to-head with the leader in each specific technology sector, the company is attempting to leverage its software within the framework of already established brands. Arguably a blueprint for survival, given Microsoft’s well publicized losses during the recession.

The partnership could also be viewed as a preemptive strike on Google’s expansion into new sectors. According to the Financial Times, “Google’s Android operating system for smartphones is gaining ground, and giving the US technology company the chance to put its web-based software on handsets.” This would loom large on Microsoft’s bottom line.

RIM’s success in the smartphone market has been “partly because the Canadian handset maker’s Blackberry devices have user-friendly e-mail.” But with Microsoft’s Mobile Office platform, Nokia phones – which now operate with Symbian operating systems – will be able to perform word processing and spreadsheet functions. This fact alone should make the combination an appealing option within corporate space.

Smartphones are the fastest growing section of the mobile phone market, and have proved to be resilient in the face of economic trouble. In fact, smartphones are “the one part of the mobile phone market that continues to grow in the recession. Mobile phone sales fell 6.1 per cent in the three months to June 30, to 286.1m units, according to figures released on Wednesday by Gartner, the research firm. But smartphone sales increased 27 per cent to 41m units.”

Only time will tell how Microsoft’s new partnering strategy works to combat Google’s rapid rise to the top of the technology heap, but it’s not unlikely that there will be more partnerships in the future. It will be interesting to see if these recent developments impact Google’s long term plans or if the juggernaut will simply stay on course.

[image via Tjeerd]

To that end, the BBC reports on some interesting fallout from the 2009 MobileBeat Conference held recently in San Francisco, touting mobile applications to be as big as, if not bigger than the internet. To make sense of this, I try to think of these individual applications as bite-sized pieces of the web-at-large, often more specific than an entire website, that provide users with a personal (sometimes customizable) experience based on the performance of a particular task.

With that specificity in mind, it’s no wonder that the market is becoming flooded with competitors – Apple’s store alone hosts over 65,000 applications and recently saw its 1.5 billionth download. But while there appears to be no end to this growth, a combination of a plateau in users (as web-enabled phones become commonplace), captured niches and overall market saturation, will lead to fewer surefire opportunities.

Ilja Laurs, chief executive of GetJar, a leading independent application store, sees this point coming sooner than many think. ”They will peak at around 100,000 by the end of the year. That will be a tipping point and after that there will be a gradual fall in the rate of development.” With initial costs for time and R&D no longer providing guaranteed return on investment, these businesses become riskier propositions, sending the talent pool elsewhere and contributing to a further tapering off.  A trend that should benefit those that remain for the long haul.

Another facet that needs to be refined is the current “retail” model that buries users in a sea of applications that rely too heavily on “one-hit wonders,” while giving smaller developers less chance of survival. Lee Williams, executive director of the Symbian Foundation, said he was not sure the consumer or the industry needed any more application stores. ”The App Store is flawed – right now [it] is just a bucket of apps. You need to get beyond that bucket and give the consumer the opportunity to wander down a really relevant aisle of content and applications that they can get access to.”

The bottom line appears to be that as this market continues to emerge and evolve the smart money will be on the players that best leverage their audience and platform with an idea or service that is transformative, novel or at the very least good for “must-have” fad.