2008’s biggest story was the recession. Yet, this year has been the year of smartphones. Adam Hartley of Tech Radar points out

While Smartphones have been around for a few years now, there is no doubt that 2008 has been a ‘tipping point’ year in the growth of the market for such devices.

What has tipped the scale in favor of smartphones this year, although they have been making smart moves for quite a while now?

Of course the innovation of the year. Apple’s iPhone 3G. The iPhone, in its 3G avatar caught the imagination of the people with its all-touch and a single master button and of course the unbelievably low price tag. (link to Nilesh’s much earlier article).

In a nutshell, Apple, for the first time, really took the smartphone outside the hallowed walls of blue and white collar corporate sector and put the games, music, finance, weather and finally the web in the layman’s pocket.

And cashing in on this smart wave, Google introduced its own legion of G-phones, the one platform, many vendor based Android legion.
And these two together, finally stole the wind from right under RIM, who after originally starting the smartphone move have now been caught in the tricky game of catching up.