Managing Information Technology

Chapter 2 • Computer Systems 31

The Smallest PCs: Smartphones

Smartphones are here to stay, with the Apple iPhone and various BlackBerry devices (from Research in

Motion, a Canadian company) leading the way. Smartphones combine the functions performed by con-

ventional handheld PC, or personal digital assistants (PDAs),with the ability to make phone calls. These

devices permit the user to make phone calls, pick up and send e-mail, manage your calendar, keep your

to-do list and address book up to date, take pictures, and be entertained with games, music, and video,

as well as a wide variety of other functions—with new applications being created on a regular basis.

In the view of Business Week’s Stephen H. Wildstrom, the Apple iPhone and RIM’s BlackBerry are

“the only true smartphones.” He thinks that asking, “which one is better?” is the wrong question; the

right question is asking, “which one is right for you?” He argues that the BlackBerry Storm (see

Figure 2.6), with its touch screen keyboard, is the hands-down winner for messaging tasks. On the

other hand, if messaging on your smartphone is less important than Web browsing, social networking,

games, and entertainment, then the iPhone wins. The iPhone is designed more for fun, while the

BlackBerry is designed more for business, especially text and e-mail (Wildstrom, 2008a, 2008b, 2009).

In terms of market share, BlackBerry and iPhone dominate in the United States (in that order),

with Nokia (Finland) leading the way in the worldwide market, followed by BlackBerry and iPhone

(Chowdhry, 2009; Gartner, 2009). The BlackBerry devices use the RIM operating system, while the

iPhone uses the iPhone OS. Other major players in the smartphone market include Palm, HTC (Taiwan),

and Motorola; other operating systems in use include Google’s Android, Palm OS, and Microsoft’s

Windows Mobile.

FIGURE 2.6 Two Views of the BlackBerry Storm Smartphone (Courtesy of Research In Motion)

office automation, and acting as the server in a client/server
architecture. Many midsized businesses used one or more
of these systems to handle their corporate data processing.
Some analysts suggested that these traditional midrange
systems would disappear, squeezed between increasingly
powerful microcomputers and workstations from the
bottom and entrenched mainframe systems from above,

but that is not quite what happened. Instead, workstations

and minicomputers have “morphed” into the complex,

intertwined category that we have chosen to call midrange

systems.These systems are primarily employed as servers

for client/server applications, Web serving, file and data-

base serving, and network management. They vary from

relatively small systems that serve one user or a single