Mobile OS wars: Symbian leads globally
Research firm Gartner has released the 2008 “Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System” stats. It shows that the reigning mobile OS champ, Symbian, remains the dominant mobile OS in the world with 52.4% market share. However the trend is not good for Symbian – its share is down by 11% from 2007. Symbian still maintains a healthy 35.8% lead over its nearest competitor, Research In Motion.
The statistics are a very relevant followup to my post on Wednesday trying to sort out what platforms developers will ultimately pick. After all, each of these platforms will have marketplaces and there are only so many developers. And all of these platforms will be vying for share in what is expected to be a down market. IDC said Thursday that it expects global mobile phone shipments to fall 8.3 percent in 2009. So-called converged device shipments are expected to increase 3.4 percent globally.
What’s notable is that our unscientific poll revealed that few people saw Symbian as an operating system worth betting on.
Based on market share it appears that developers should be focused on creating applications for Symbian, Research in Motion, Windows Mobile, and the iPhone and iPod Touch as a turbo charge for growth. Palm remains too much of a wild card.
However, that decision isn’t all that easy to make. Excluding Symbian, the mobile operating systems are bunched together in market share. For 2008, Mac OS X had growth of 245.7 percent, according to Gartner. The BlackBerry platform had the second best growth at 96.7 percent. Clearly, growth dictates focusing efforts on those two platforms.
Other notable points from Gartner’s tally:
*Fourth quarter global smartphone units were 38.1 million, up 3.7 percent from a year ago. For 2008, 139.3 million smartphones were sold, up 13.9 percent from a year ago.
*Nokia had market share of 40.8 percent in the smartphone market at the end of the fourth quarter with RIM second at 19.5 percent. Apple had 10.7 percent.
* In the fourth quarter, Linux-based smartphone sales were up 19 percent from a year ago due to Android-based T-Mobile phones.
From: cnet
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B@D on March 17th, 2009 at 2:56 AM
Symbian has captured the market but i wonder if many people actually get output from their (capable) Symbian phones. I might write a post about how to get the most out of your cell phone to make life easier.