What a busy time (but perhaps an appropriate one) to divulge a mass of stats from the smartphone world. Canalys' latest report shows that 64 million smartphones shipped worldwide in 2006. Symbian's world market share was up to 67%, of which Nokia accounted for 50% and Sony Ericsson 5%.
Read on in the full article.
A couple of interesting quotations from the findings:
"Shipment volumes of Motorola’s Linux smart phones in Asia, particularly China, still significantly overshadow those of its Windows Mobile ‘Q’ in North America."
"Canalys estimates that Linux devices represented more than 90% of the 1.5 million smart phones shipped by Motorola in Q4 2006."
...so even within Motorola, the biggest American phone maker, Linux smartphones are outselling Windows Mobile ones by over 9 to 1, yet Windows Mobile receives acres of coverage and Linux smartphones don't get any.
It's yet more evidence that American or American-influenced coverage of the smartphone scene is severely distorted to the point of being completely useless to anyone who is interested in getting a balanced view of the smartphone world.
The American smartphone media don't seem to take any interest in the world outside US borders, yet that's exactly where the future of smartphone operating systems will be decided.