In-Stat: New Converged Wi-Fi/Cellular Handsets to Take Market by Storm

In-Stat has a new report that predicts "by 2010, shipments of cellular handsets containing Wi-Fi will exceed 132 million devices. Carriers have been reluctant to offer Wi-Fi-capable handsets for several reasons, but Wi-Fi has spread so fast that carriers will not be able to resist much longer."

Allen Nogee at In-Stat said, "In the end, most US cellular carriers will embrace Wi-Fi in their handsets, as carriers know that if they don’t, other carriers will, and these carriers will likely steal away some of their customers. Combo handsets also offer carriers opportunities to provide services such as VoIP over Wi-Fi, lessening impact on their cellular data system." Highlights include:

• More than 20 cellular handset models now have, or will soon be, released with embedded Wi-Fi access.
• A few cellular carriers are planning to offer services that support voice calls over both cellular and Wi-Fi, and some Wi-Fi/Cellular handsets are incorporating VoIP clients for services like Skype.
• It had been assumed that business customers would be first to adopt Wi-Fi/Cellular handsets, but in fact consumers are likely to be more receptive to early adoption of the technology.