WiFi-capable phones were forecast to grow quickly

What the report described

The appeal was the prospect of moving between a wireless LAN and mobile service with one device. Infonetics figures in the report described recent sales growth and projected very large shipment increases through 2010.

How to read the claim

Those rates and sales totals are historical analyst projections, not a measure of today’s handset market.

One handset promised a change of context

The appeal in the forecast was not WiFi, VoIP or cellular service in isolation. It was the prospect that a person could use a wireless LAN in one setting and a mobile network in another without carrying separate devices. That creates a user benefit only when the change of context is understandable: the person needs to know what service is active and why the call or data session behaves differently after the transition.

VoIP introduced a service-design question

Putting VoIP beside cellular use made the phone a meeting point for two ways of reaching someone. The attractive version is continuity: a call or data task follows the user rather than the room. The harder version is responsibility when the experience changes. The device maker, network operator and service provider may each shape part of the path, so a customer needs a clear expectation about who supports a failed call, a changed connection or an unfamiliar setting.

Shipment forecasts were not a usage result

Infonetics’ projected growth conveys the scale of interest the analyst expected around the combined proposition. The comparison to make is between the promised convenience and the extra choices introduced by multiple access paths. A single device reduces what someone carries, but it can also make the service boundary less visible. That tension is why the report belongs to a period of experimentation in converged handset design. It is a forecast about the appeal of that combined proposition, not a claim that seamless switching had already become routine for customers. The forecast therefore makes sense as a bet on context-sensitive communication: desk, hotspot and street each implied a different access choice within one product.