PUNE, INDIA: In the third quarter of 2008, the global smartphone market reached its weakest year-on-year growth, says a Gartner report. Weakest since Gartner, Inc. began tracking the industry.

Worldwide smartphone sales to end-users stood at 36.5 million units in this quarter and Gartner analysts feel that in the current economic climate the smartphone device market would only grow but at a slower pace.

The pecking order may not have changed much but the gears of growth have taken a hit. Nokia maintained its No. 1 position with 42.4 per cent market share in the third quarter of 2008, but also recorded a decline in sales of three per cent year-on-year.

While the company has introduced solid N-Series products with top features, it is the lack of a commercial touch-screen device in its smartphone portfolio that in the opinion of Gartner's analysts have prevented Nokia from capitalizing from consumer demand for this feature.

It is at this time that Nokia announced N97, seen as a much-needed evolution for the n9x series of products.

N97 tagged popularly as the 'iPhone killer' is the first N-series Nokia phone with a proper touch screen. On the product side, it gets good reviews on its 3.5in haptic/resistive touchscreen, 32GB of onboard storage, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and 640x360 pixel resolution, and the QWERTY keypad bundled with the virtual touch, which is good for users, who missed text features in iPhone.

New features like A-GPS sensors, electronic compass, social networking capabilit

ies with blogging, chatting, posting, sending texts or emailing and support for third-party widgets are other frills too.

But for customers of high-end devices especially in the business segment the forte of BlackBerry is hard to crack in when it comes to work-related features like Email.

Corporate executives like Shashank Dixit, a CEO and Sivasankaran, director - Storage Practice, Sun Microsystems rate BlackBerry at the top on these criteria despite the new entrants and new categories.

For Sivasankaran though Blackberry is more of a work device than a phone, it still comes first in the ranking followed by iPhone.

"I have not tried the latest avatars but I guess they are packed with a lot of other features. If you talk of mail and productivity in particular, Blackberry is the apt choice."

RIM or Research In Motion also introduced an offering in the Touchscreen category with Storm.

Blackberry smartphone sales have increased 81.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2008 and RIM has continued to expand its presence within the consumer segment and refreshed its portfolio with new models and form factors.

Gartner feels that RIM sales will receive a boost from its new products in the fourth quarter and analysts predict that the Storm is RIM's most important product launch to date and has the potential to be a major product for the company.

The original, however, is not to be ruled out anytime soon. Pioneer Apple regained its third position in the global smart phone market improving its market share to 12.9 per cent in the third quarter of 2008.

As to how much of a black eye would iPhone receive from new entrants like Storm or N97 is too early a guess. At the price points that iPhone sells on; volumes don't matter, so it's hard to define success by old rules.

"In mature markets like Singapore and Hong Kong, the number have been low for iPhone but at the same time the device well known (even if not bought) in markets like India," points out Gupta.

The Smartphone category in particular has been growing but has taken a beating due to the current slowdown and low-consumer confidence, which has led to slackening of demand of high-end devices and replacement sales. Still N97 is slated to be a good move by Nokia in the view of analysts.

Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst, Mobile Devices, Gartner commends Nokia that did not have much to offer in the Touch-screen device category so far.

"It has been hit aggressively from all sides in the high-end device species from players like HTC, RIM. Nokia was earlier leading the smart phone category by a large lead but not is getting affected from all directions, hence N97 puts their position well."

Even then, this entry is both overdue as well as late. Given that the device will hit the ground not early before six months, much might change by then. As Gupta warns, Nokia's position would again be different if there are more launches by rivals in these six months.

On a regional level, North America comes up as the fastest growing market, but Smart phone sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) have increased 14 per cent y-o-y. The markets in Asia/Pacific and Japan declined 11 per cent and 23 per cent, respectively in the third quarter of 2008.

While the overall global smart phone market is battered with slowdown, India and China appear to be in the not-so-bad plateau stage, in view of month-on-month net additions in the range of 10 million that Indian operators are still managing to boast. These regions would still relatively hold their attraction in terms of growth, opines Gupta.

Looks like it's anybody's game in the current market scenario for Smart phones and for relatively well-off markets like India, it would only pay off well if smart phones are smart enough.