I am still trying to figure out where smartphones fit in the larger market.

Sure, i have found myself wanting a smartphone, but them i am a geek. But i find that as time moves forward, feature phones gain many of the most popular features of a smart phone. Hell, if the definition of a smartphone is that it can run third party stuff, my SE C702 is a smartphone, as it can juggle multiple j2me apps

I am not sure if the general public want, or even know, what a smartphone is. And thats the big problem with all us geeks, pundits and whatsnot, we have our head in the tech grind so much that we may not be able to detach and look at it from a "outsiders" point of view.

It seems that email, and having that on the phone (or maybe in the pocket, RIM products where not phones at first), is a big thing in US. As i think about it, i cant help but wonder if that had something to do with compuserve, aol and all that. People got used to having a kind of email address.

Thing is, i do not recall reading about such services in european nations. Closest i can come up with was a terminal style product that got used in england and france, minitel or something. But when gsm came online, and nokia launched a phone that could send sms, not just receive, sms exploded, especially among teens.

At first the 160 limit was punishing, but that lead to the development of the texting dialects (if one can call them that). Then one got phones that could nail together multiple messages into one long message.

Mms came along with the camera phones, and is probably mostly still used to send quick images, and the odd video. Sure, one could use a email address for that, but i have grandparents that have never owned a computer, but they sure have a mobile phone in the house. Thing is that mms shares that one number that one also use for sms and calls, rather then having a second addrees, the email address, that one send to.

Another thing is a observation i did at some point, that while most people i know would hang up when they hit the voicemail service of someone they wanted to call, and instead type out a sms and send it, USA seemed hooked on voicemail, and its offshot, push-to-talk. Just look at the big reaction apple got when they showed of visual voicemail, tho i suspect most people outside of USA just went "err, ok?" and sent another sms...

all in all, sms have entered culture in a way. radio and tv shows base their audience interaction on sms these days, for instance. More then one channel have scrolling sms greetings along some edge of their screen...

Thing is this, while big flashy apps are found on the latest greatest smartphones, sms is found on just about any phone (closely followed by its cousin, mms), and as such is available to anyone, including grandparents surviving on a minimum pension. And lets not forget, sms service info can be printed in pure text. A code, some additional info and a short 4-5 digit number.