Two senior ABI Research analysts—wireless research director Stuart Carlaw, and principal mobile broadband analyst Philip Solis—would appreciate it if everyone in the media would stop incorrectly calling the iPhone a smartphone. (Because it’s stupid, stupid, stupid! Just kidding.) No, the analysts simply want people to realize that to be called a true smartphone it must use an “open, commercial operating system that supports third party applications.”
The iPhone, at least for the time being, is a closed environment to third-party applications. It’s simply a high-end feature phone.
Solis goes on to explain that feature phones can have third-party apps, but in general they’re weak and limited in comparison to software for smartphones.