Perhaps overshadowed by some of the announcements and devices at the Smartphone Show, Symbian also released a lot of interesting numbers and stats. Read on for the headline figures and comments on the Symbian world and the industry in general. Includes the latest Canalys numbers.
Read on in the full article.
The definition of what a smartphone is does not seem to be that you're allowed to install native code. AFAIK there are (almost) no Linux phones that let you install native code, and I'm pretty sure that NTT DoCoMo's non-open Symbian phones are also included in these smartphone numbers.
Statistics might show that the number of third-party apps for Symbian phones is increasing, but anyone who's switched to a Symbian 9 device must have noticed the lack of software. In reality, it'd probably be more correct to say that the number of third-party apps has decreased after platform security was introduced.
The most interesting figure here is that 7% of all sold phones run SymbianOS. That's impressive.
"You're probably wondering how Apple's iPhone is doing. Leaving aside questions about whether it's a true smartphone or not, it's currently selling at 1.3% of worldwide smartphone sales (but 12% of smartphone sales in the USA)."
And that gives Apple a 0.13% market share of general mobile phone sales, compared to Nokia's 39%, which makes Nokia's market share three hundred times bigger.
Mind you, this is missing the point somewhat because Apple makes a darn good profit on each handset (they even get a share of the future phone bills) so they don't actually have to sell very many phones to make it worthwhile.
I really don't think Apple has any ambitions to have a large market share, as that would involve very VERY large production runs (we're talking hundreds of millions a year) of very low margin phone models. Apple has always avoided the cheaper end of the market with their music players and computers, I think it will be the same with phones.
It's also worth noting that Apple had to come up with some kind of phone-based iPod replacement sooner or later, as the separate music player is in severe danger of extinction as phone music players become higher capacity, easier to use and include built-in music stores. Even if Apple just transferred all their existing iPod customers over to the iPhone, that would make the iPhone project worthwhile from a business point of view.
Comparing Apple with Nokia is like comparing Rolls Royce with Toyota, they make their money in totally different ways from totally different markets, with only a relatively small overlap in their product range.
"You're probably wondering how Apple's iPhone is doing. Leaving aside questions about whether it's a true smartphone or not, it's currently selling at 1.3% of worldwide smartphone sales (but 12% of smartphone sales in the USA)."
You didn't mention that your statistics are based on Apple's first day and a half of iPhone sales in the US that happened to fall in the quarter ending in June. For the July to September quarter, Apple claimed 27% of the US smartphone market, the only region it was being sold in during that quarter.
Apple is on track to sell its goal of 10 million iPhones next year, and plans to introduce its SDK for native apps on the iPhone in February. That will put the OS X based iPhone in direct competition with Symbian. Nokia boosters shouldn't dismiss Apple, because its ability to deliver desirable, competitive products has wiped up the music industry and appears set to invigorate smartphones in the same manner.