Gartner release Q3 statistics
Hardware wise Nokia is dropping about 10 percent market share. Apple continue to flourish with almost twice as many units sold as last Q3, but only increasing market share slightly. HTC is more than doubling the amount of sold units compared to last Q3, and almost doubling the market share.
Looking at the figures from an OS perspective the rise of Android is clear. Even though some have had very good sales (Apple) and other still doing quite decent (RIM) it’s obvious that Android is the strongest trend. Symbian is loosing almost 10 percent market share, RIM although selling over 3 million units more is still loosing 4 percent market share. Apple gaining about 1 percent market share even though doubling sales. Meanwhile Android sold over 19 million units more than last Q3 and thus increased market share by 22 percent to 25.5 percent.
This changes the placings in the top 5 sold units by OS category making Symbian still no1 at 36.6%, Android second at 25.5%, iOS third at 16.7%, RIM at 14.8% and at fifth place Microsoft Windows Mobile at 2.8%.
I’m predicting that Microsoft will rise considerably from the 2.8% to Q32011 with the sales of Windows Phone 7 driving their sales.
Windows Phone 7 so far is a very good OS, and has great potential with good performance and a steady influx of new apps to it’s marketplace. However, there are still a few things that feel very “v 1.0” about it so Microsoft needs to keep development pace up and start getting patches out there.
I’m very interested in seeing if the WP7 update process will be as good as the regular Microsoft PC OS updates, if so they’ll have a major advantage over competition. However, they need to start using it soon!
Article about smartphone statistics for Q4 2010.
More articles about statistics on mobilemancer.
Smartphone usage statistics from the US
Pew Research Center recently released their 2010 survey of cellphone usage, and it shows a clear trend.
The report is only from data collected in the US, but still shows a clear trend of increased smartphone usage.
The numbers compared between May 2010 and April 2009 shows a 15% increase in people using their phones to access the internet. A 15% increase in people recording videos on on their phones, 12% increase in using their phones for listening to music and a 9% increase in people checking emails.
Pew concludes:
Cell phone ownership has remained stable over the last year, but users are taking advantage of a much wider range of their phones' capabilities compared with a similar point in 2009. Of the eight mobile data applications we asked about in both 2009 and 2010, all showed statistically significant year-to-year growth.Now the question is if this is indeed due to people using more of their phones capabilities, or that cellphone ownership percentage stays the same, but people are upgrading their cellphones to smartphones with more capabilities.
Looking at the sales figures for Android devices and iPhone in the US, I suspect it's more of a question of people getting their hands on better, more capable handsets.
The trend is clear though, and it will be interesting to see if this development keeps on or even picks up more momentum. I would suspect it will actually gain momentum over the next few years, as more and more people will go for a cellphone to smartphone upgrade when the time comes to swap handset.
Then there is also some demographics in this that are interesting, that shows the younger segment (aged 18 to 29) being more prolific user than those older of age in the survey. Which is often a given being that adoption of new technology is often more rapid in the younger segment. To see all the results follow the link to the original survey below.
Pew Research mobile use survey 2010
Article about 2010 Q4 smart phone statistics here.
More articles about statistics here.
Android vs. iPhone - Browsers and marketshare
Even though the iPad hasn't been available all that long, and is in fact not yet available in large parts of the world, the mobile browser share of iPad's are rapidly climbing. It's increasing so fast in fact that it has already surpassed Android and RIM based devices on a world wide basis, at least according to research from Morgan Stanley.
But regarding market share of mobile units in North America, it is Android based systems that are increasing their cut and according to the online market tracking firm Quantacast it is mainly the iPhone that is loosing the battle. Might be because iPhone was the only real competitor regarding smartphone app consumption on the market.
