US SmartPhones by OS versus What OS Would you want?

Charts, charts, charts…

from Abiro - Mobile News by Anders Borg

Smartphone World Stats

Smartphones Evidently Quite Popular [Digital Daily]

from All Things Digital by John Paczkowski

The fourth quarter was a record one for smartphone sales. Research firm IDC reportsthat the industry shipped 54.5 million of the devices during the period. That’s a 39 percent increase year-over-year and one that benefited most top smartphone peddlers, particularly Apple.

The company shipped 8.7 million iPhones in Q4, up from 4.4 million a year ago, for a whopping 97.7 percent in year-over-year growth. With a 14.4 percent share of the worldwide smartphone market, Apple (AAPL) is now the No. 3 maker in the world, behind Nokia (NOK) and Research in Motion (RIMM), which hold 38.9 percent and 19.8 percent of the market, respectively (see table below; click to enlarge).

But it’s becoming increasingly difficult for Nokia and RIM to maintain their leads. Though it shipped 10.7 million BlackBerrys in the fourth quarter–a nice increase from about 7.6 million–RIM’s market share for the period remained nearly flat at 19.6 percent. Meanwhile, market leader Nokia saw its share drop slightly to 38.2 percent from 40 percent in 2008, even though it shipped 20.8 million phones during the quarter, one third more than in the prior year.

So, 97.7 percent growth for smartphone upstart Apple and 37.7 percent growth for Nokia, the undisputed smartphone leader worldwide. Quite a disparity

Ovi - Show me the to go Home....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ6un9p30Uw&feature=player_embedded

Symbian - the Open Source Gorilla

Symbian Foundation talks about its move to open source

from Engadget by Chris Ziegler

As we'd figured out last night, Symbian's big reveal for today was the completion of its move to a fully open, royalty-free platform -- meaning you no longer need to be a paid-in-full member of the Foundation to see all the code -- and they're ready to talk about it and spread the word far and wide. Though Symbian's certainly not getting as much share of the mobile discussion these days as some of its smaller competitors, it's certainly important to keep in mind that these guys have software deployed on literally hundreds of millions of devices, making this perhaps the largest-scale conversion of a closed operating system to open source in history. Because the code has been licensed under the Eclipse public license rather than the harder-core GPL, device manufacturers will be able to continue to tack on custom features and hardware support without open-sourcing it, which should make them less gun-shy about throwing weight behind the platform -- and considering how badly these guys need to get back into the spotlight, that's a good thing.

Ovi gets Smart(er)?

Thumbs Up to Nokia’s Ovi Store

from The Nokia Blog by Mark Guim

I’ve had a really great Ovi Store experience today. I found out about a new app called Maps Booster from the official Ovi Daily App blog and thought of trying it out for $2.99. I made the purchase on theNokia N97 mini and was surprised I can pay with my phone bill. The app worked great, so I thought it was worth installing on my other phones too. To my surprise yet again, the Ovi Store knew I already paid for it. I was able to re-download the app on the Nokia N97 and the 5800 free of charge.The other surprise I encountered was the ability to re-download purchased apps on other devices. When did this happen? This makes it really handy for people like me who switch phones frequently.

2009 Mobile Phone Unit Sales

Mobile Phone Market Shares for year of 2009 and last quarter 2009
from Communities Dominate Brands by Tomi T Ahonen

As we head into the bloodbath of 2010..  So the final numbers are out for the 5 biggest handset makers for 2009 and for several smaller players as well. Some manufacturers like RIM (Blackberry) and ZTE report their quarters on 'odd' months ie they do not end their quarter in March/June/October/December, so with them we still have to wait a bit to know for sure, but the big picture is now clear. We know the full numbers for the full year 2009. And there have been changes. (Poor Motorola)

ALL HANDSET MAKERS TOP 10

1 - Nokia . . . . . . .   432 Million 38  %
2 - Samsung . . . .    227 Million 20  %
3 - LG . . . . . . . . . . 117 Million 10  %
4 - SonyEricsson . . . 57 Million   5  %
5 - Motorola . . . . . . . 55 Million   5  %
6 - ZTE . . . . . . . . . .  50 Million   4.5%
7 - Kyocera . . . . . . . 45 Million    4  %
8 - RIM  . . . . . . . . .  35 Million    3.5%
9 - Sharp . . . . . . . .  29 Million    2.6 %
10 - Apple . . . . . . . . 25 Million    2.2 %
Others . . . . . . . . . .  56 Million    5%
TOTAL . . . . . . . . 1,130 Million (1.13 Billion)

SMARTPHONES

1 - Nokia . . . .  68 Million    39%
2 - RIM . . . . .  35 Million    20%
3 - Apple . . . .  25 Milllion    15%
4 - HTC  . . . . .  8 Million    5%
5 - Others . . .  35 Million    21%
Total  . . . . . . 175 Million

Symbian OS Continues to Dominate

iPhone, Android No Match for Nokia’s Symbianese Liberation Army [Digital Daily]

from All Things Digital by John Paczkowski

Funny–all this yammering about the fast-expanding iPhone ecosystem and the coming Android onslaught, but Nokia’s Symbian is still the leading mobile operating system around the world. What’s more, it’s likely to remain so in the foreseeable future.

According to IDC’s latest Worldwide Mobile OS Forecast and Analysis, Symbian will remain market leader until at least 2013, despite some big gains by rivals like Android. This is largely thanks to Nokia’s (NOK) strength in markets beyond the United States, particularly emerging ones.

Interestingly, IDC believes Google’s (GOOG) Android will be the fastest growing wireless operating system between now and 2013, when it will be the second most widely used mobile OS in the world. Which means that the research firm expects Android to best not only Apple (AAPL) and its iPhone OS, which holds the No. 3 spot globally, but BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) which holds the No. 2 spot.