If you hate touchscreen phones and think that they’re just a fad, don’t read this. Today Samsung announced that it has sold 50 million touchscreen phones to date, selling an impressive 40 million of those in 2009. To put that figure into a global touchscreen context, Apple has sold over 30 million iPhones. According to Samsung, it’s on track to exceed its 2009 sales target of 200 million mobile phones and around 20 percent of those will be touchscreen devices.
Samsung has highlighted that it sold more than 10 million S5230s within six months, 9 million F480s since May 2008 and 3 million Corby S3650s within two months. These are impressive figures but there are clear challenges ahead for Samsung including developing a better app ecosystem for its various touchscreen handsets.
Earlier this year Samsung announced that it was launching Bada, a new open mobile platform that we know little about. According to a Samsung site, Bada will offer opportunities for developers and deliver a better experience for users. We’re not sure whether or not Bada fits into the various other platforms, such as Android or Windows mobile, that Samsung uses but we’ll find out soon.
What’s clear is that Samsung needs to tap into Apple’s lucrative app market if it wants to take its touchscreen phones to the next level. Whether Samsung will use existing platforms such as Android to push things forward or create its own app ecosystem is still uncertain but it’s a vital part of the puzzle that needs to be solved when competing against devices such as the iPhone.
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