Q3 2010 Smartphone Platform Sales Figures from Gartner

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Limited Q3, 2010 worldwide smartphone platform sales figures are now available, published by Gartner here. Year on year, Symbian-powered smartphone sales are up over 50%, but it's still a sharply rising market and Android's explosion into second place means that Symbian now has a very serious competitor, in addition to being 'down' to 36.6% world marketshare. With Android on the march, iPhone marketshare was also down year on year, ditto RIM and Windows Mobile. See below for some comments and the stats.

From Gartner's press release:

Worldwide Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System in 3Q10 (Thousands of Units)

Company

3Q10

 Units

3Q10 Market Share (%)

3Q09

 Units

3Q09 Market Share (%)

Symbian (mainly from Nokia)

29,480.1

36.6

18,314.8

44.6

Android (multiple manufacturers)

20,500.0

25.5

1,424.5

3.5

iOS (Apple iPhone)

13,484.4

16.7

7,040.4

17.1

Research In Motion (Blackberry)

11,908.3

14.8

8,522.7

20.7

Microsoft Windows Mobile (no WP7 this quarter)

2,247.9

2.8

3,259.9

7.9

Linux

1,697.1

2.1

1,918.5

4.7

Other smartphone OS (inc. Samsung's Bada)

1,214.8

1.5

612.5

1.5

Total

80,532.6

100.0

41,093.3

100.0

Smartphone sales now account for 19% of all mobile phone sales worldwide, the highest fraction ever. Overall smartphone shipments were up 96% year on year, explaining why Symbian's share was down despite growing shipments by 50%.

[Gartner's release focussed more on the overall phone market, in which Nokia has a healthy world lead at 28%, comfortably outselling the numbers 2, 3 and 4 combined (Samsung, LG and Apple) in the sales tables.]

Steve Litchfield, AAS