The struggling global economy has taken a toll on worldwide smart phone sales in the third quarter, with sales growth the weakest in four years, according to new data from <a href="http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=search&searchTerms=Gartner+Inc.">Gartner Inc.</a>
After warning less than a month ago that the worldwide handset market would do worse than expected this year and next, Nokia on Thursday revised down its expectations again.
Third-quarter growth in the global smartphone market was its weakest year-on-year since Gartner started tracking the market, but Apple's iPhone stood apart with strong gains.
Melbourne company Kogan today announced Australia's first mobile phone to ship with Google's Android operating system. The phone is just the second in the world to have the Android OS preinstalled, after T-Mobile launched the G1 in the US in September.
Businesses are planning to boost the deployment of smartphones during the next three years, while laptop deployments will slow dramatically, according to survey of 340 companies in the US and Western Europe.
Handset makers collectively will sell fewer mobile phones in 2009 than this year, and sales for 2008 will be lower than previously expected, Nokia warned on Friday.
As wireless devices become more numerous within businesses, their convenience will be counterbalanced by an increasing potential for security problems, according to a Gartner analyst.