We all knew this moment was going to come sooner or later. Symbian, Nokia’s floundering mobile OS, has ruled the roost essentially forever in terms of sales (although it has been fairly absent in the mindshare stakes as of late), but that lead has been slowly crumbling as the twin forces of iOS and Android snapped at its heels. The question wasn’t if, but when, one of them would overtake it.
According to one research firm – Canalys – Android has now dethroned Symbian and taken up residence in the number one spot. According to their numbers, phones powered by Google’s OS sold 32.9million in the last quarter of 2010, compared with 31million Symbian sales. Hold on, you may think – who the hell is buying all those Symbian phones? Nokia’s latest flagship device, the N8, fell pretty flat. Well, bear in mind that Symbian has been around for a decade, and has powered every Nokia phone made in recent history, as well as a good percentage of Sony, Samsung and Motorola phones until recently. Couple that with Nokia’s dominance in emerging markets such as India and parts of Africa, and you’ve got a recipe for big sales.
However a flood of decent quality, cheap Android phones is now stemming the Symbian tide, and trouncing Google’s perennial rival, Apple. The iPhone notched up just 16.2million sales in the same period. Even if you add on the number of iPads sold in the last quarter – 7.3million – the iOS number still falls short of Android by almost 10million.
Of course, this is just one report from one analyst, however the numbers collected by these firms never vary too much. The other important figure was that the overall smartphone market grew 89% year-on-year, with over 100million of the diminutive devices being sold in the three months before January.
