More than 100 million handsets with touch screens will be shipped in 2008, and more than 500 million will ship by 2012, according to a new study by ABI Research. Citing recent product introductions, the research firm says intuitive user interfaces are now becoming a critical ingredient in smartphones.
The 18-page report, "Mobile Phone User Interfaces," specifically discusses products such as Apple's iPhone and the Windows Mobile-based LG Prada, HTC Touch, and Samsung F700 devices, as well as various handsets from Sony Ericsson. Touch screens and touch pads make the handsets more intuitive, pleasant, and efficient to use, the study's authors note.
According to the report, there is a difference between a standard interface, which may or may not respond to a touch screen, and one that has specifically evolved to employ touch. The firm says that for a handset's user interface to be considered "advanced," it should offer the user or programmer the following elements:
A dynamic layout
Skinning/theming
Animation
Support for 3D effects
At least one specialized authoring tool
Window management
ABI Research's abstract gives examples of seven different frameworks for creating advanced handset interfaces. These are Adobe's Flash, Bluestreak's MachBlue, Mizi's Prizm, Qualcomm's uiOne, Trolltech's Qtopia, Tat's Kastor, and Symbian's UIQ interface layer.
Of these, only Flash has commonly been associated with Windows CE and Windows Mobile-based products, though Windows-based implementations of Kastor are also cited on Tat's Web site. Though not directly addressed in the ABI Research report, Microsoft Research has created its own advanced user interfaces including, but not limited to, the "zooming" ZenZui, and the Microsoft Surface concept initially applied to table-top devices.
This promotional video shows Microsoft's ZenZui user interface (Click above to play video; source: ZenZui)
According to ABI Research industry analyst Shailendra Pandey, "Handsets with intuitive user interfaces ... can result in higher ARPUs [average revenues per user] for mobile operators by generating greater usage of their value-added services." In the past, many smartphones and high-end handsets with a good number of attractive features have been commercial failures, simply because their user interfaces were too complex, she adds.
ABI's research report is available now, though pricing was not released. More information is available on the firm's website, here.
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