IDC says Symbian enjoyed a 55.9 percent share of the converged mobile device operating system market in 2004, projected to reach 60 percent in 2009. Microsoft Windows Mobile claimed a 12.7 percent share in 2004, projected to reach 17.3 percent in 2009. Linux had an 11.3 percent share in 2004, projected to reach "nearly 17 percent" by 2009, IDC says.
IDC's conclusions differ from a
report last fall by ABI Research, which suggested that Symbian's market share could fall below 50 percent by 2009 with much of the remainder having been gained by Microsoft.
Another contrary view comes from Gartner, which
recently reported that Linux enjoyed a 13.7 percent share of the smartphone operating system market during the first quarter of 2005, compared to 4.5 percent for Windows Mobile. However, Gartner appears to have omitted Windows Mobile "Pocket PC phones" from its smartphone count, so the marketshare of Windows Mobile could be substantially higher than reported.
IDC also noted that in 2004, for the first time, more pen-based handhelds (PDAs) using Windows Pocket PC and CE were shipped globally than devices based on Palm OS. Nevertheless, a companion IDC report points out that the PDA market continues to decline.
"Symbian Version 9.0 is designed to drive the Symbian OS into mass-market mobile phones, while supporting next-generation applications, services, and content and protecting against newly emerging threats. This platform will dominate converged mobile device volume for the foreseeable future," says Stephen Drake, program director for Mobile Software at IDC.
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