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Netbooks and smart phones: industries converge and the land-grab
has started
– Canalys Mobility Forum EMEA, London, 17 November 2009
Reading - Tuesday, 14 July 2009
For immediate release
Canalys announced today that it will host its inaugural Canalys
Mobility Forum on 17 November at the Hilton London Heathrow Hotel.
This will be the place where the major players in PCs, netbooks and
smart phones discover how to navigate the new mobile industry
landscape, deal with its challenges and make the most of the
opportunities it presents.
Steve Brazier, Canalys President and CEO, said, ‘Despite almost
universal market gloom, two stars are shining brightly in the mobile
world. Smart phones, already established as a hugely important
sector of the mobile phone market, continue to grow in volume and
take an ever-larger proportion of overall mobile phone market value.
Netbooks are the new act in town, taking many in the industry by
surprise and showing quite spectacular shipment growth by carving
out a lucrative niche for new kinds of users at low prices, and
capitalising on operator subsidies. Mobile network operators are
delighted that these devices are driving growth in data traffic and
finally justifying those investments in 3G. These trends are
creating many new business challenges, as two large, but very
different, industries rapidly converge. The leading smart phone
vendors include Nokia, Apple, RIM, Samsung and HTC in EMEA, while
the leading sellers of netbooks are Acer, Asus, HP, Samsung and
Toshiba. Only Samsung and Apple have proved effective at
participating in both phones and PCs.’
The Canalys Mobility Forum format will allow each participant to
get to grips with the new order of business engagement in the mobile
space. The PC and phone industries will come together to hear the
views of Canalys on the key issues, the opportunities, pitfalls, and
likely winners and losers as new business models emerge. These will
be discussed in panels representing the leading players in these
fields, including PC vendors, mobile operators, operating system
providers, channel partners, component suppliers, developers and the
media. Hot mobility issues will be tackled, such as:
- Is this the end for ‘Wintel’? To what extent can ‘Quandroid’
make inroads? This panel will explore the future of
mobility and which platforms and user interfaces will dominate
five years from now.
- Applications and marketplaces. What’s hot
and what’s not and which business models will be most
successful. Will Ovi work for Nokia and can operators
realistically offer a workable alternative in a multi-platform
environment?
- Operators – partners or competitors? Smart
phone and PC vendors alike are embracing the subsidised hardware
model, but where are the operators heading? What is the optimal
territory balance between operators and vendors and what is
rightful place for the operator in the value chain?
The dramatic growth of mobility is shaking up the technology
industry. Consider the following:
- Newly developed operating systems and user interfaces are
gaining traction fast and are starting to look like credible
alternatives to the long-established incumbents.
- Microsoft is not leading innovation in either area – how
soon could its dominance come to an end?
- Application marketplaces have reinvented shareware. Whose
role is it to manage these revenue streams: operators, hardware
vendors or operating system providers? How profitable will these
services become?
- Customised software and services now afford innovative
hardware manufacturers the opportunity to succeed through more
than industrial design.
- With a plethora of choices, the confused consumer needs
clear advice from retailers, which in turn need efficient
training to enable them to recommend appropriate products,
services and contracts.
- Exclusive operator deals offer rapid growth, but they can
restrict uptake over the longer term. Operators suddenly face
complex inventory management challenges, while their suppliers
face difficult channel choices.
- Poor battery life remains a concern for all: challenges to
Intel are coming on this front.
- What is the difference between a smart phone, a netbook and
a notebook PC? Is screen size all that matters? Where are the
overlaps that give rise to new competitors?
Canalys is uniquely placed to conduct such an event. It works
closely with both the smart phone and PC industries, understands
both markets and can bring together the audience and the analysis to
deliver unparalleled value in a single day. Attendees can fly in on
the morning of Tuesday, 17 November 2009 and return to the office on
Wednesday. Rita Chaher, Canalys Events and Marketing Manager,
commented, ‘This format allows us to provide attendees with a rich
and intense business experience and at the same time not require
that they spend a lot of time away from their important day-to-day
activities.’ The Forum is being held in the Hilton London Heathrow
Hotel, which is just a short ride from all of Heathrow’s major
terminals.
For full information about the event, including registration
details, please visit
www.canalysmobilityforum.com.
Press who would like to attend this event should contact
Gemma Edwards regarding free press passes.
About Canalys
Canalys specialises in delivering high quality market data,
analysis and advice to the world’s leading technology vendors. It is
recognised as a key provider of continuous advisory services and
confidential custom projects for marketing managers and strategists
within blue-chip IT, telecoms, navigation and consumer electronics
companies. It has unrivalled expertise in routes to market for all
kinds of high technology products and services in the consumer, SMB
and large enterprise segments, and provides worldwide market data
and trends analysis.
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