According to Gartner’s final 2008 “Worldwide: Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System” stats, reigning mobile OS champ, Symbian, remains on top of the world with a whopping 52.4% majority market share. Although that number is down over 11% from 2007, Symbian still maintains a healthy 35.8% lead over its nearest competitor, Research In Motion. (chart after the break)
Of the 6 major mobile operating systems (Symbian, RIM, WinMo, Mac OSX, Linux, and Palm OS) included in the data, 3 platforms – Symbian, WinMo, and Linux – all lost some of their respective market share over the past year, while RIM and OSX each experienced growth of over 5%. Palm managed a meager fraction of an increase (.4%), but there’s no denying that things will get more interesting once they let the Pre (Web OS) out of the bag.
[via CNET]
I am not too surprise with this data, because most nokia phones uses Symbian. :)
Personly, I feel that people normally do not choose the Mobile OS. The users normally use anythng that comes inside their cell phone. :)
It’s renewals.
Nokia has more ISP’s in more countries. When the time comes for renewal, the current operators know the schedule, have the address, and can offer the incentive to keep customers – like a free, new phone and easy update from old to new.
With that regional, multi-provider, and momentum advantage, the 11% share drop is a killer. That wipes out the net margins for Nokia and the operators that depend on Nokia.
The bottomline impact is far greater than what Gartner reports.
The question is simple: Nokia works in all operators [Simbian] and Windows Mobile / RIM too. When The iPhone works with more than one operator in a single
Country this numbers could be change. Other important things is the term “sales” does not count apps. Is a mistake, for example, the iPhone has 27,000 apps
Today. Windows Mobile took 6 years for the same
number.
It means near 1bn sales per year
Cheers
Forget about market share, if I could sell one phone a year and make a billion dollars it would be a no-brainer. My only concern would then be how to sell two a year or three a year.
Like the Mac on the PC side, it’s better to be in top 5% than in the bottom 95%. That’s the way Apple needs to view the iPhone- revenues 1st and then being at the top.