According to recently published data from Juniper Research, the smartphone market will nearly double between 2008 and 2013.

Juniper researchers believe annual sales of smartphones will jump by 95 percent to 300 in a period of five years. In 2008, 13 percent of all handsets shipped were smartphones, and their market share is expected to jump to 23 percent in 2013.

Overall mobile sales are expected to grow by 5-6 percent in 2008, while some vendors are projecting a decline of up to 10 percent in 2009, but this doesn't seem to apply to smartphones.

Juniper attributes the growing demand for smartphones to the popularity of Web 2.0 applications, which are forcing consumers to migrate to smartphones which provide vastly superior internet capabilities than regular phones.

The fact that smarphones have transformed from being unwieldy, geekish looking things into fashion items, such as Apple's iPhone, probably has something to do with the trend as well.

More here.