Touchscreens are dominating handset development

A couple of years ago, handset vendors were fighting about hardware - from thickness to colour strategies - but this year's Congress was very much about software and touchscreen capabilities. Most top manufacturers announced at least one touchscreen addition to their handset portfolio. Among the touchscreen devices announced were the media-centric Samsung Omnia HD and BeatDJ, Sony Ericsson's Idou, the Vodafone-HTC Magic, Nuvifone G60 Garmin-Asus, Nokia N97 (and 5800), HTC Touch2, LG Arena, Acer Smartphone and Huawei Android. Most of the touchscreen portfolio that we have seen is mainly located at the high-end of consumer segments aiming at increasing data usage. User experience can vary depending on level of customisation and in most cases manufacturers support multiple software platforms from Symbian to Windows Mobile or Android. Mobile operators are expected to favour (and maintain subsidies) in the high-end consumer segment this year.

(This article is part of a series of follow-ups on Mobile World Congress 2009 from the GSMA Intelligence team.)