The term ‘smartphone’ refers to mobile telephones which combine the functionality of normal mobiles with modern address and calendar functionality, interactive entertainment programmes, as well as online access. In recent years, target-group-oriented applications – apps – have enjoyed increasing popularity, through which devices gain quick access to Internet-based services. Smartphones allow users to send text messages and emails, read newspapers and books, blog, chat, photograph, watch films and of course also make calls; all forms of media merge. Most models are now outfitted with touchscreens.

Since the two major technology groups Apple and Google began their smartphone market offensives in 2007 and 2008, the term has become more or less a synonym for iPhones and Android devices. These two operating variants accounted for over 90 per cent of all devices sold in 2013, the same year that smartphones outsold regular phones for the first time. The trend towards high-performing computers in miniature has long been underway. When it comes to patents and design rights the major advanced smartphone manufacturers find themselves in fierce technological competition with each other, which frequently ends in the courtroom.