New research shows Nokia Corp. and Symbian continue to lead the worldwide smart device market, while PalmOne Inc. and the Palm OS have largely failed to increase their business.
According to numbers from research and consulting firm Canalys, Nokia increased its share of the smart device market from 28 percent in the first quarter of last year to 50 percent this year. At the same time, No. 2 player PalmOne’s market share dropped from around 17 percent to 9 percent. Research In Motion Ltd. came in third, followed by Fujitsu and Hewlett-Packard Corp. Canalys includes non-wireless personal digital assistants, wireless PDAs and smart phones in its definition of the market.
On the operating system side, the firm found Symbian increased its market share from 40 percent in the first quarter of last year to 61 percent this year. It appears the OS vendor managed to steal share away from Microsoft Corp. and PalmSource Inc.-the No. 2 and 3 players, respectively-as their market-share numbers declined during the period. Indeed, PalmSource was the only listed OS vendor that saw its shipment numbers decrease, from about 1.3 million a year ago to 1.1 million this year.
However, Canalys said the overall market is increasing, with smart device shipments topping 10.7 million units in the first quarter over the 5.9 million shipped in the same quarter last year.
“Symbian will enjoy the volume Nokia brings, but I expect it would also like to see the other licensees expanding their portfolios,” said Canalys analyst Rachel Lashford. “Their focus remains on producing lower-specification, lower-cost 3G and 2G imaging phones for the mass market. Some enterprise customers may feel uncomfortable about adopting a platform so dominated by one vendor. The recent arrival of the Series 60 based Nokia 3230 heralds the company’s first steps in pushing the OS down into the mid-market, which, if successful, is likely to significantly increase not only Symbian’s volume, but also Nokia’s share of it.”
