Smart phones

[bellinghman]

I see from the Reg that Android has overtaken Symbian as the most popular smartphone OS, with 33% of the market.

Apple has fallen back a bit (numbers doubled, but share down to 16%).

Windows Phone 7 is sitting on 2%.

This is interesting, for a number of reasons.

Firstly, Nokia have lost their dominance of the market. This is probably down to Apple and RIM having shown that there's no need to go for Symbian in a phone. Nokia could be in big trouble as a result.

Secondly, Apple have done only reasonably well - in theory, they could have been sitting there in first place, not well back in third, having effectively reinvented the smart phone model that Android is exploiting so well.

Thirdly, Android sales are up sevenfold year-on-year, so some further growth is to be expected. I wouldn't be surprised to see them top 50% of the market, at which point app makers will be really considering the platform.

Fourthly, though Microsoft have lost overall percentage, with WP7's introduction failing as yet to take over their earlier OSes, WP7 is very new to the market, and it's going to be another period or two before we can tell what its market trajectory will really be - they could yet follow Android.

I think the next year could be rather interesting.

Comments

[lady-findel.livejournal.com]

I own a Nokia N900 that runs on Maemo, a light-weight version of Linux. Granted, it is more of an internet tablet that can make calls, but Nokia could have made more out of this. This phone is stable, fast, can do a lot of things outside of smartphone scope. If they had banked on this, with the open source function Linux offers, I think they could have had something wonderful.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I note that Maemo has now morphed into Meego.

But you are right - they were there before Google did it with Android.