Human beings have invented new ways to communicate since the beginnings of the species, leading to one of the most connective devices yet created, the smartphone. Capable of performing nearly countless functions, sales of such phones have exploded in only the last few years, with ComScore estimating that by 2010, over 45 million people in America had already purchased a smartphone. Thats nearly 20% of the total American cellular phone subscriber base that has adopted a technology that has been available for less than 20 years.

Sales of these devices have exploded because they allow the ultimate in solution portability. The earliest design, released by IBM in 1993, was extremely limited in functionality, offering less than a dozen features along with the ability to talk on the phone. Nokia followed with their best concept three years later, initially offering a product which would lead all future comers down the road of communication breakthroughs. Soon following this design with the first open operating system in a palm sized phone with power similar to a full sized computers, the smartphones by Nokia offered functionality like never before, but it came at a cost. Their phone offerings cost 20 to 40 percent more at the store than the competitions, which eventually drove consumers to other, cheaper brands.

Other brands flourished and continued to enter the smartphone market, as people became more and more attuned to the connectivity enabled by these new devices. Need to check your email, get a few stock quotes, have a quick glance at the weather forecast for the day, and enter a few data points into your business spreadsheet, all from someplace on the road, far from the office? Smartphones permit these tasks and countless others to be completed remotely.

Once Apple introduced their iPhone in 2007, with a full sized touchscreen and finger pressable icons, another revolution seemed poised to take off. This time, the revolution centered around applications. Within two years, over 185,000 custom applications were available to run on smartphones, allowing unprecedented functionality. Suddenly, there are more ways to communicate on a phone than ever before!