14 DAY TRIAL // The smartphone segment is expected to suffer major changes starting with the fourth quarter of the ongoing year, as new, highly appealing devices should hit the market soon.
Apple, Nokia and Samsung are only some of the vendors who will bring new devices to shelves in the coming months, and they might change the way in which users perceive smartphones and how they make purchases.
Apple, for example, is expected to unveil a new iPhone model to the world as soon as this week, and that device could be the long-rumored iPhone 5 device, a recent article on DigiTimes notes.
The same as some of the latest high-end smartphones running under Google's Android operating system, the new iPhone 5 model should arrive on shelves with a dual-core application processor.
Moreover, it is expected to run under the new iOS 5 platform, and to pack support for both WCDMA and CDMA connectivity, though not inside the same device, it seems.
In addition to this device, there will be a new Google Phone, the already-leaked Nexus Prime, which should hit the market with a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU and a large 4.65-inch display, while running under the new Android flavor, Ice Cream Sandwich.
Another important launch for this quarter should involve Nokia's first Windows Phones, specifications for three of which have just leaked into the wild.
However, other handset vendor will also come to the market with new Windows Phone devices, including HTC with its already announced Radar and TITAN, as well as Samsung, ZTE and others.
All these phones should help Microsoft's mobile operating system gain some share in a market dominated by Android (with around 40-50 percent of the market) and iOS (with nearly 25 percent).
The platform that is missing from this picture is Symbian, which, of course, will lose even more ground to the newcomers, and which is bound to disappear entirely from shelves and charts in a few years.