Smart phones are booming the mobile market giving tough competitions to PDA's and laptops as users are now more using these devices. A typical smart phone, nowadays, allows access to email – including "push" email from a corporate mail server – Internet browsing, and office applications, such as word processors or spreadsheets, yet is compact and lightweight, and so is the ideal solution for those who need communication and computing resources whilst on the move.

A new research from Gartner has reported Apple, with just a single iPhone model, is No. 3 among global smartphone vendors for Q1 2008. Apple broke into the "Top 3″ in the smartphone market with 1.7 million iPhones sold since it's debut last year. It seems that the iPhone is seen globally as a competent smartphone capable of competing with the best - even with all it's faults

A smart phone is typically designed to run applications as well as receive telephone calls and, as such, it runs an operating system – often abbreviated to "OS" – of some kind. The Windows Mobile 6 operating system, for example, is designed for the smaller processors and storage capacity of smart phones, but, nevertheless provides integration with familiar applications, such as Excel, Media Player and Outlook. Alternatively, the older Symbian operating system – popularised by Nokia and Sony Ericsson – is widely available and works well with Bluetooth, while Palm OS is easy to use, but does not support 3G – "3rd Generation" protocols for higher data rates and "bandwidth hungry" applications – and is available on a limited number of devices.