Smart phones boom - Symbian up, MS and Palm down • The Register

Smart phones boom - Symbian up, MS and Palm down

Nokia's ballgame

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco • Get more from this author

Posted in Mobile, 26th April 2005 18:01 GMT

Symbian increased its share of the worldwide smart phone market in Q1, according to research by Canalys. The market as a whole has almost doubled from a year ago with 10.7 million devices shipped in the first three months of the year, up from 5.9 million in the first quarter of 2005, but down by 200,000 from the Xmas quarter.

Symbian's share grew from 40.5 per cent a year ago to 61.4 per cent, shipping 6.6 million devices in the quarter. Despite seeing a 44 per cent growth in volume, Microsoft slipped from 23.1 per cent to 18.3 per cent, and PalmSource lost both share and volume, grabbing 10.5 per cent.

Blackberry snagged seven per cent, on 758,000 units sold. PalmSource's figures reflect PalmOne's difficulty in getting the Treo 650 out of the door: delays caused the company to miss volume sales in the run up to Christmas and to push back European availability.

PalmOne moved a million devices, giving the company 9.4 per cent of the market by vendor, with Nokia increasing its dominance, to snag 50 per cent. Nokia is responsible for 82 per cent of the Symbian devices sold, according to Canalys.

The research company cites large backorders for the Nokia 9300 [launch analysis - Reg review] as evidence that after some well publicized mis-steps, the phone giant's enterprise strategy is beginning to make an impact. ®