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1st January 2013
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2012 was a tough year for mobile phone manufacturers, with many
major handset builders reporting sales sharply down. The year was
also marked by some vicious litigation between companies, some of
whom seem to be engaged in an all-out war to destroy their rivals.
You can see the predictions we made last year here.
 2013
Predictions
Screen sizes increased throughout 2012, and one key question
seems to be this: just how big can they go? The massively popular
Samsung
Galaxy S III has a huge 4.8" display, and even stubborn
old Apple upped their display size to 4" from 3.5".
Traditionally we have expected bigger displays to have a higher
pixel count, but the relative success of the big screen but fairly
low resolution Nokia
Lumia 900 indicates that perhaps size is everything, and
expect to see big but cheap panels becoming standard for all but
the cheapest smartphones.
Handsets have also become faster, and 2013 will see a
battle between dual core and quad core processors
at the top end. Quad core CPUs might not have the easy ride that
you might expect. Intel will also begin to carve out a small but
solid market share with its new range of CPUs, but ARM cores will
still remain dominant. Expect high-end smartphones to ship with
2GB of RAM as standard by the end of 2013.
3D technology was a bust in 2012, and we don't expect
it to return any time soon. If 3D displays ever end up in a future
iPhone or Galaxy S then things might change. There is an outside
chance that LG might produce a third 3D handset though, especially
as they make 3D TVs.
With a few exceptions, megapixel counts in cameras have
generally maxxed out at 8 megapixels or so. The Nokia
Lumia 920 demonstrates that there is a lot more to camera
optics than the number of sensors in in the camera, even the 41
megapixel Nokia
808 PureView generally takes 5 megapixel photos and uses
the rest for oversampling or optical zoom emulation. We would expect
to see 12 megapixel sensors becoming more common, but the
industry is really going to have to work hard to keep up with Nokia.
1080p and 720p HD video recording will start to be standard in all
but the cheapest phones, and it is just possible that the first
UHDTV capable devices might be capable of 2160p recording
by the end of 2013.
NFC, wireless charging, LTE and HSPA+
will gather pace during 2013, although the fragmented frequencies
of the LTE landscape will cause problems. Apple gave LTE a significant
boost with the iPhone 5, we would expect the next generation iPhone
to support NFC and perhaps wireless charging as well which will
move things along a lot more.
 We
predicted that feature phones would be dead in 2012, but
it seems they are alive and well. Nokia's successful Asha range
capable but inexpensive devices are blurring the boundaries between
feature phones and smartphones. But sub-€100 Android smartphones
will become more common and will be very attractive to consumers.
The market will remain dominated by iOS and Android
devices, with Windows Phone 8 trailing a long way behind
in third place. No other mobile OSes will matter in any significant
way, although it won't stop companies from trying to promote alternatives.
Legal cases will continue to rumble on, usually involving
Apple in one form or another. It appears that Apple and Samsung
are involved in a wrestling match to the death, and either they
will have to come to an accommodation or one side (or perhaps both)
are going to end up being cleared from the shelves. Many other firms
are involved in litigation, and probably the only real solution
is to improve the way that companies can license technologies and
to stop patent abuse.
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