Today was the first official day at the CTIA09 event in Las Vegas and the industry overall did not paint a gloomy economic picture like so many other areas of business in the US.  Although 2 out of 3 keynote speakers spent half of their speeches discussing the economy and its effects, the industry news was all good.  270 Million wireless customers, 2.2 trillion minutes of use, 1 trillion SMS messages, impressive data usage increases and 1 out of 3 handsets are expected to be smartphones by the year 2011.  As I was listening to the news, one thought repeatedly jumped to my mind.  Apple has changed the rate at which the industry has progressed and I would argue that they have almost single-handedly brought the smartphone market to the masses and no longer are smartphones and data plans just for businesses.

Apple was not present at the event but their footprints can be seen all over the industry.  Lets take the keynote speach of RIM (BlackBerry) CEO, Mike Lazaridis for example.  The focus of the speach was obviously the new BlackBerry App World which many would tell you is a “me too” move to catch up to the iPhone App store.  He then went on to discuss the importance of music and affiliating the BlackBerry with artists such as U2… again, isnt that just a way to catch up to the music and itunes capabilities of the iPhone?  Then we saw some applications, most of which are already available on the iPhone application store and the trend continues.  A similar story was seen in the speech for the Android platform (although the difference with Andriod is that it is open source and developers have much more flexibility).

The truth though was that there were a lot of people avoiding the topic of the iPhone (rightfully as they are direct competitors) but I find it difficult to ignore. The Apple iPhone has changed the expectations of users from their handsets and has opened up peoples minds to realize that data is not just for the rich or business people.  The convenience of information on the go is and should be available to all.  This has not only been a great profit for Apple and has helped them carve their name in the mobile space, it has also been great news for the industry as Apple has helped lead this growth.