Most popular mobile operating systems
With Nokia still the clear favourite when it comes to smartphones, it’s no surprise that Symbian – its favoured operating system – is the clear leader when it comes to smartphone operating systems. But, that could change in the coming year or two with Apple making serious inroads into the mobile market with its iPhone and Google’s Linux-based Android operating system starting to gain traction.
Already Android is starting to show signs of popularity and according to analysts Gartner, Android helped Linux mobile phone sales climb by a healthy 19.5% in the final quarter of last year. Gartner estimates that Android accounted for almost 20% of the growth in Linux mobile sales in the quarter, which climbed from 2.7 million units in the fourth quarter of 2007 to 3.2 million units at the end of 2008.
Android sales were helped by the launch of the HTC G1 phone launched late last year. And with HTC planning another Android release this year – called Magic – Android-based mobile phone sales could start climbing.
Apple
The big future challenger to Symbian however, will very likely not come from Linux or Windows Mobile, but from Apple. In 2008 sales of Apple OS X devices (the iPhone) increased a hefty 245.7% from just 3.3 million devices in 2007 to a more than respectable 11.4 million devices. This makes Mac OS X the fourth most popular operating system for smartphones, behind Symbian (52.4% market share), Research in Motion (16.6%) and Windows Mobile (11.8%). Mac OS X had an 8.1% market share and Linux had 8.1% at the tail end of 2008.
Symbian
The Symbian operating system, still the market leader in smartphones, lost 6.1% of its market share over the course of 2008 but with more than 72 million devices sold it still commands more than 50% market share. But, the trend for Symbian does appear to be firmly set downwards, particularly with a growing number of serious competitors. Research in Motion’s popular Blackberry devices, for example, helped lift its market share from 9.6% to 16.6%. And both Mac OS X and Windows Mobile all increased their market share over the course of 2008.
Linux
Despite very strong fourth quarter sales, thanks in part to Android, Linux-on-mobile sales for the whole of 2008 were down 4.2%. Just over 11.2 million Linux-based smartphones were sold in 2008, down from 11.7 million in the previous year. With the new HTC Magic being released in the near future, Android sales in 2008 could spike and together with RIM and Mac OS X, pose a serious threat to Symbian.
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