Nokia leads in smartphones, Linux rising

Nokia Corp. sold more than half the 71 million smartphones purchased last year and Motorola Inc. followed, with less than 9 percent of the market, according to a new study by ABI Research.
Nokia racked up sales of 40 million smartphones out of the world’s nearly 71 million units sold last year, a 38-percent increase over the prior year’s 28.5 million units, ABI said. For context, smartphones sales represented 7 percent of last year’s approximately one billion mobile phones sold worldwide.
The results bode well for Nokia’s position as smartphone sales increase globally, though competition will erode the dominance of Nokia’s use of the Symbian operating system, according to the research firm. Motorola’s smartphone market share was driven by sales of its Ming device in China, which uses the Linux operating system. ABI forecasts that Symbian’s presence on smartphones will drop to 46 percent within five years, down from 73 percent last year. ABI cited strong competition from Linux and Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile.
The factors at play in a successful smartphone, according to ABI’s Shailendra Pandey, include design, user interface, form factor, operating system and bundled applications.
Features increasingly sought by consumers? Touchscreens, MP3 players, Wi-Fi and/or Bluetooth connectivity, fast processors and lots of memory, both onboard and through an expansion card.
ABI projects that, with average selling prices falling, vendors will seek to squeeze the software cost on the smartphone’s bill of materials-a trend the research firm supported by citing Symbian’s decision to lower its licensing fees, as well as Linux’ increasing popularity.