Apps Make the Iphone

No longer do people just use their phones for voice calls and texts, but increasingly they are demanding that their handset contains a quality stills and video camera, an MP3 or other audio player, a web browser, navigation software and a multitude of other computing resources. Because of huge advances in processing power and battery technology all the aforementioned features are now regularly incorporated into portable telephony devices known as smartphones.

It is because smartphones such as the iphone 3Gs and Blackberry offer such improved processing capacity, flexible operating systems and firmware that can be updated online, that demand for them is soaring. Memory storage of 32GB is now common and represents the same amount of storage offered on expensive, top of the range PCs as recently as five years ago.

But, according to technology buffs the reason that smart phones are ultimately set to take over the mobile phone market in the next few years is because of the wide availability of applications, or ‘apps’ as they are often known. Programs that are easily downloaded onto portable devices, apps convert any standard phone into a personalised handset, with a selection of programs decided by the user.

Although widely available for a number of smartphones the Apple iphone 3G is king of the pack offering an amazing 85,000 different applications for download. By comparison, the RIM Blackberry offers only a paltry 2,000 different apps for its users. Indeed, in little under two years in excess of 2billion iphone apps have been downloaded by iphone users worldwide.

Check out the top 25 applications on offer for any smartphone and you will find that social media features heavily, along with messaging packages; the latter which rather uniquely allow users to bypass their phone provider’s network and call another app user for free, but only when accessing Wifi. However, the usual chat features and text messaging for subscribers can be accessed through 3G, WiFi, GPRS and also via The Edge.

O2’s exclusive UK deal to provide the iphone 3G expires during winter 2009, and Vodafone and Orange are already widely touting the fact that they will be offering iphone 3Gs over their networks before the end of the year.

Given the increased level of competition amongst providers accompanied by a huge anticipated demand, handset and tariff prices are expected to drop, making the devices even more affordable and therefore accessible to mobile phone subscribers. Watch this space, iphone 3Gs will be everywhere!