Industry analytics outfit ComScore Inc. has released their latest figures for mobile operating system market share, covering the fourth quarter of 2010. The quarter is always the biggest period of the year for any retailer, covering Black Friday and the festive season. So how did the major operating systems do?
The big winner was Google Inc. ‘s Android, rising a full 7.7% to take the top spot from Research In Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry OS. We saw the beginnings of this early in the year, when another analyst firm, Canalys, broke the news that Android had dethroned Symbian as the top-selling mobile OS. It was only a narrow victory, with Android edging out BlackBerry by a mere .8%, however the green robot clearly has momentum on its side, as RIM’s workhorse OS fell 5.4%, so look for that gap to widen substantially in the current quarter.
Elsewhere in the field Apple Inc. was mostly stagnant with only .1% growth, bringing its total share to 24.7%, and Palm Inc. continued to bring up the rear with 3.2% (down 0.7%).
The other big news from the report is that Microsoft Corp., despite launching the well-received Windows Phone 7 along with a slew of handsets, and embarking on a massive publicity campaign, actually lost market share to the tune of 1.7%, putting its total at a worrying-low 8%. The software giant has been noticeably cagey with its WP7 sales figures, and most have chalked it up to disappointing numbers.
It’s worth noting that the smart phone sector is still a growth market, and this report covers percentage share of the whole market, not per-company sales, so although operating systems may gain or lose market share, manufacturer sales may still have been perfectly respectable. For example Apple claims to have sold 16.2 million iPhones during the period this report covers, which is undoubtedly more than any single manufacturer producing Android handsets managed, but put all those Android devices together and you get a much higher total, which can account for Android’s massive growth during the period.
