Smartphones are becoming the standard in mobile devices, according to a report released yesterday by research firm In-Stat. The report predicts that the demand for advanced mobile handsets that contain significant processing power, robust memory, large screens and open operating systems will continue to dominate into the future.

In-Stat forecasts that unit shipments of smartphones will be nearly 850 million by 2015, as they move toward the 1 billion shipment mark.

“There are several critical factors that drive smartphone success, these include a powerful browser, a wide variety of apps, an easy to navigate user interface, and a good keyboard or touchscreen. Additionally, other intangible attributes, such as being ‘fashionable’ and that ‘your friends have one’ are important,” said Allen Nogee, principal analyst for In-Stat, in a statement. 

In-Stat predicts that more than half of U.S. handset shipments will be smartphones by 2012. The firm suggests that Android is maintaining its momentum and will continue to be the leading OS.

The firm says that the demise of Symbian has been greatly overstated, noting that annual global unit shipments of Symbian-based handsets will continue to grow, resulting in Symbian having the second highest unit shipments of all the smartphone OSs.

The report also projects that by 2015, over two-thirds of smartphones will still be WCDMA-based, with LTE smartphones comprising only a small minority of annual handset shipments, even in 2015.