domingo, 8 de agosto de 2010

Symbian Remains Way Ahead of Android and iPhone

Despite Android's fast growth, the iPhone's stability, and Research In Motion's changes, none of them can match the market share of the Symbian mobile operating system. About 300,000 Symbian phones are sold each day, compared to 200,000 Android devices, as estimated by Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Symbian is primarily on Nokia mobile phones.

Google's Android is showing impressive growth. Apple's iPhone iOS is holding its own, while Research In Motion's BlackBerry, feeling the heat, has a few tricks up its sleeve.

But none of those players yet hold a candle to worldwide sales of handsets running the Symbian operating system, primarily on devices made by Nokia, the world's biggest cell-phone manufacturer.

The nonprofit Symbian Foundation, a cooperative with several wireless carriers and OEMs that manages the open-source operating system, boasted Thursday that 300,000 Symbian phones are sold each day around the world, or three per second. That's about a dozen in the time it took you to read this sentence.

The estimate is 50 percent higher than the 200,000 Android-based phones that Google CEO Eric Schmidt said are being activated each day, in an interview with Reuters this week.

Low Penetration In U.S.

The Symbian numbers are based on a Canalys report this week that said Symbian is the first operating system to be shipped on 25 million phones in one quarter.

"The smartphone marketplace has become more crowded than ever," said the foundation's executive director, Lee M. Williams. "So the fact we continue to outsell our competitors by such large margins [makes] make us highly confident in our outlook, and we will continue to embrace the challenges ahead."

Symbian's world market share has fallen from 73 percent in 2006 to a still-impressive 49 percent as it faces an increasingly crowded field. Many consumers in the United States, however, may never have heard of Symbian because its profile here is so low.

"In the U.S., Symbian is largely irrelevant because of Nokia's small penetration here," said Alexander Spektor of Strategy Analytics. Although Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile offer Symbian-based devices, those handsets rank seventh in terms of market share, according to Strategy Analytics.

"It might be a matter of the specific tastes of U.S. consumers and the carriers, who largely decide which phones to offer to consumers," Spektor said. "Sometimes they do it based on what consumers want, and sometimes it's based on what earns them the most money. But here in the United States, [Symbian] didn't resonate as well as Nokia would hope."

Part of the reason for low interest here is that mobile applications have been driving the smartphone market, and Android and iPhone have the two largest app markets.

Android Rise

"In terms of developer interest, [Symbian] is not as attractive as the iPhone or Android platform," Spektor said. "Players like Nokia and RIM are having trouble attracting developers to bring the same level of compelling apps, while the iPhone has created an unprecedented touchscreen user experience that developers are itching to get their hands on."

iSuppli predicted in its latest report that Android-based phones will eclipse Apple's iPhone worldwide by 2012, with a 19.4 share of the market compared to Apple's projected 15.9 percent share. Two years later, Android's share could be as high as 22.8 percent, the firm predicts.

"Android is taking the smartphone market by storm," said iSuppli senior wireless analyst Tina Teng. "The OS started with entry-level models in 2008, but the flexibility Android offers for hardware designs and its appealing business model in terms of revenue sharing have attracted vigorous support from all nodes in the value chain, including makers of high-end smartphone models."

But Symbian is still likely to stay on top -- for the time being, at least. "Nokia's scale globally remains huge," Spektor said. "So Symbian will continue to be the dominant platform for at least five years."

© Copyright 2000-2010 NewsFactor Network. All rights reserved.


No hay comentarios.:

Publicar un comentario