A smartphone is a mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant (PDA) and a mobile phone or camera phone. Today's models also serve to combine the functions of portable media players, low-end compact digital cameras, pocket video cameras, and GPS navigation units. Modern smartphones typically also include high-resolution touchscreens, web browsers that can access and properly display standard web pages rather than just mobile-optimized sites, and high-speed data access via Wi-Fi and mobile broadband.
The most common mobile operating systems (OS) used by modern smartphones include Apple's iOS, Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows Phone, Nokia's Symbian, RIM's BlackBerry OS, and embedded Linux distributions such as Maemo and MeeGo. Such operating systems can be installed on many different phone models, and typically each device can receive multiple OS software updates over its lifetime.
Apps is a software that is use for different application. The infographics below shows how the smartphone and Apps growth has been this several years.
VIA: Columnfivemedia.com and blog.mylookout.com