Off in the distance

My mobile phone went off for repair sometime late February, after I decided that the damned thing wasn't getting any better and had, in fact, become totally unusable.

(This was at a point far worse than any new user would have tolerated - all I can plead is the frog-boiling analogy: because it got worse tiny bit by tiny bit over months, I never really clocked just how bad it had become.)

Well, the repair place came to much the same conclusion that I had, and tried to call me on the 10th.

That was the day I was riding a Eurostar beneath the English Channel.

So they tried calling me again on the 17th.

That was the day I was riding a Eurostar beneath the English Channel, in the opposite direction.

Neither time did they get through to me - mostly because I'd not thought to give them my mobile number, not expecting them to take till the 10th in the first place.

I finally got in contact today, and they tried to offer me a replacement. For a Google Nexus One, a machine that was discontinued (with Google at the time apparently dropping out of making their own-name phones) some months ago. Oops.

Well, they offered as replacements a HTC Trophy (Windows 7), a Nokia N8 (Symbian), and two Blackberries (BB's OS, whatever that is).

They're now trying to work out whether they can actually find me an Android phone, and will (I hope) call me back in the next day or two with a better offer. I've told them that the HTC Desire is probably the closest they'll find of current phones, but who knows what they'll actually come up with.

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.