Of course I have a smartphone. As a matter of fact I have a few. I also believe that smartphones will dominate and that mobile banking should take cognisance of it. It is just a matter of time. I decided to investigate how long it will take. (I got most of my research here).

According to Gartner 14% of phones sold (not used) could be classified as smartphones in 2009. (That is 170 million compared to 1210 million). In 1Q2010 this rose to 17% (54 million, compared to 320 million). Not that a spectacular growth, especially considering that Nielsen estimates that 25% of phones sold in the US in 2Q will be Smartphones. For an average of 17%, this means that the percentage must be much lower in other countries (especially in emerging economies).

So, then what is a Smartphone? According to Gartner, 45% of the smartphones sold in 1Q was Nokia (did Nokia even make a smartphone?), 20% Blackberry, 15% iPhone and Android 10%. Windows and the other average operating systems made up the rest. This means (if I do my calculations correctly), that 2.5% of phones sold in the world in 1Q were iPhones. (15% of 17%). Not that much.

Next question is, are people actually using the "smart" part of smartphones, or do they just use it as a phone? This is where AdMod did some interesting research recently. This is what they found: Of the web-surfing traffic coming from smartphones, 42% of that, comes from iPhones. It turns out that people don't really use their Blackberry's to surf the web. (At least according to AdMob - I know, they got their research wrong. This cannot be...). But let us just assume that they got it right, then according to my calculations, then 3.75% of phones are being used today in the world to surf the web via Smartphones.

Domination, what domination? We better ensure that mobile banking still run on other mobile phones if we want to stay relevant in the world. Sure, on the other hand, if your customers represent the top 3% of the world's pyramid, then do not worry about other phones.

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