Smartphone & OS Trends

Posted by VISITOR on Sep 17, 2005 12:37 PM EDT
Nokia Blogs; By Nicolas Fogelholm 		Mail this story
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I can´t predict the future and I am no expert in OSes, but when looking at the growth of Linux (412%) and the theses below I think I will take a risk and bet on Linux. Yes, a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet with Linux, broadband access over Wi-Fi, hi-resolution widescreen display, Flash Player and more is on my gadget list for Santa.

The latest numbers from Canalys indicate that people want smartphones, Symbian rules and the populartity of PDAs continue to fall. Here´s some figures:

  • Global shipments of smartphones went up 105% YTY in Q2 2005
  • Handhelds (PDAs) down 14%
  • Nokia´s market share of smartphones grew to 55%
  • Symbian's share rose above 60%

Last year the smartphones market share of all mobile phones was 3 % and with the above presented figures it should rise to 6% this year. Okey, the phones get smarter that´s obvious, but what´s under the hood - now and in the future? Today, according to Canalys Symbian dominates the mobile operating system market (62.8%), Microsoft comes second (15.9%), PalmSource comes third (9.5%). I don´t know why the most interesting OS was left out? Anyway, according to Gartner embedded Linux powered 14 % of smartphones shipped worldwide in Q1 of 2005 and that figure was up 412% from 3.4% in Q1 2004. WoW!

I can´t predict the future and I am no expert in OSes, but when looking at the growth of Linux (412%) and the theses below I think I will take a risk and bet on Linux. Yes, a Nokia 770 Internet Tablet with Linux, broadband access over Wi-Fi, hi-resolution widescreen display, Flash Player and more is on my gadget list for Santa.

  • Symbian´s developer support isn´t that good
  • Developing for Linux is relatively fun and developing for Symbian is generally not
  • Microsoft Mobile Windows will pick up speed in the corporate market
  • Microsoft has little manufacturer or carrier support
  • Linux is inexpensive and has a great developer community
  • Java works on Linux

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