smartphone

Considered a killer app, a smartphone is a cell phone that's integrated with a data device, containing the features of a PDA and more. Think iPhone, think Android. Smartphones, which are mobile phones that act like minicomputers, can access the Web and email and a bunch of other technology features including thousands of apps. But beware of smartphone face!

Historical perspective: Apple's first iPhone was announced by Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007 and released on June 29, 2007 for $499 (for 4GB version) and $599 (for 8GB version) with a 3.5-inch display. 

In a watershed moment in the history of computing, global shipments of smartphones exceeded those of PCs for the first time in 2010. As of 2011, 83% of people own a cell phone, and more than 50% use a smart phone to access the Internet. The competition became so fierce that during 2011-2012, tech companies in the smartphone industry alone spent as much as $20 billion on patent litigation and patent purchases—a sum equivalent to eight Mars rover missions. In 2011, for the first time, Apple and Google each spent more on patent lawsuits and purchases than on developing new products.

By September 2018, 89 percent of teenagers had their own smartphone, up from 41 percent in 2012. Children were reported as getting their first smartphones at around age 10, down from age 12 in 2012. And in the first half of 2018, the Chinese tech giant Huawei sold 95 million smartphones, shipping more phones globally than Apple as sales rose steeply in Europe, the Middle East, and India. 

As of 2024, an estimated 4.88 billion people worldwide own smartphones, an increase of 635 million users from 2023. This is about 87% of the world's mobile phones and the number of smartphone users is expected to continue growing, reaching 7.52 billion by 2026.