Smartphones spar in changing market

Good old advice like “it’s what’s inside that matters” appears awfully true in the changing smartphone market. Gone are the days when you would look at the designs or brand names when buying your mobile phones. Nowadays, many look past all that.

According to industry sources, it is the OS, or operating system, used in handsets that has emerged as a key factor when customers purchase new smartphones. This means people will be asking themselves questions like, “Do I want Android or Windows Mobile?” as opposed to “Do I want Motorola or Samsung?”

With the war of smartphones came the OS war. And it was foreseen.

Last October, research firm In-Stat analyst Allen Nogee predicted, “The [smartphone OS] fight will not be pretty.” The same month, another firm, Gartner, forecast that Google-backed Android phones will overtake Apple’s iPhone in 2012, grabbing the No. 2 spot after the Symbian OS used in Nokia devices.

Users seem to agree that the OS plays a role in whatever choices they made.

SK Telecom, Korea’s No. 1 mobile carrier, rolled out the Android-based Motoroi last month and said that more than half of those who preordered the handset cited the OS as the reason for the purchase. With that in mind, the company is currently using a mascot it calls Androboi, as in Android Boy, in ads for the Motoroi.

“I am particularly happy with the platform of my iPhone,” says Kim Hyung-moo, a smartphone user. “The platform makes me feel as if there are no boundaries as to what I can do.”

But local mobile manufacturers have recently chosen starkly different paths in the OS war.

Samsung Electronics, the world’s second-largest mobile phone maker, has introduced Wave, a new phone based on its own Bada operating system. And J.K. Shin, president of Samsung’s handset business unit, indicates that the company could roll out more smartphones based on Bada.

LG Electronics, Samsung’s rival, however, announced that for now it will not develop its own mobile operating system. Scott Ahn, head of LG’s mobile business unit, predicted that the “smartphone OS will be winnowed down to the iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile in coming years.”

Few are predicting who the likely winner will be.

By Kim Hyung-eun [hkim@joongang.co.kr]