| Windows Mobile gains marketshare in growing smartphone market |
Nov. 20, 2006
Unit sales of smartphones nearly tripled between 2004 and 2005, but growth slowed to around 50 percent in the first half of 2006 over the first half of 2005, In-Stat reports. Additionally, Windows Mobile grabbed U.S. marketshare to match that of BlackBerry and Palm during the first half of 2006, according to the analyst firm.
The growing acceptance of smartphones "offers new competition to established products such as BlackBerry, Personal Information Managers, and PDAs," In-Stat says.
Analyst Bill Hughes notes, however, that despite "spectacular sales, many smartphone users continue to carry the very devices that smartphones are meant to replace." Additionally, he points out that "users have been slow to add new applications to their devices," and most "have only downloaded a few applications."
According to Hughes, much of 2005's robust smartphone shipment growth can be attributed to a surge in Linux-based handset shipments in Asia, during the final months of the year. However, he adds, these devices -- primarily from Motorola, NEC, and Panasonic -- "don't really have the advantages of smartphones," in comparison to the capabilities offered by devices running the Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Palm OS stacks. Although the Linux-based handsets can run user-added Java applications, Hughes considers them to be more on the level of feature phones than smartphones.
So what's a smartphone? In-Stat does not appear to have a simple definition of the term, Hughes told WindowsForDevices.com. To date, he explained, In-Stat's smartphone shipment numbers have been based on what OS the handsets run -- with "smartphone OSes" being defined as Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Palm, Symbian, and Linux.
Using this method of counting, Hughes explains, the smartphone market actually spans three classes of device:- "Converged devices," which combine phone functions with laptop-like computing capabilities
- Devices that combine PDA and phone functions
- Feature phones running "smartphone OSes," a category that includes most of the Linux-based handsets that have shipped to date
Based on this breakdown, more than half of the smartphones that have shipped globally fall into the third, feature phone, category, Hughes explains. In the U.S., however, smartphone device makers (Palm and Blackberry) and OS vendors (Microsoft) have been doing "really well" this year, he adds.
Judging by its title, In-Stat's new report -- "Smartphone 2006: Whose Definition Is It Anyway?" -- promises to provide further insight on what a smartphone really is, at least from In-Stat's perspective. After defining the term, the discusses the global market for smartphones, and includes a review of the major suppliers of smartphone OSes and worldwide shipment forecasts by OS through 2010. It also includes results from a survey examining the perceptions and attitudes of smartphone users and non-users, according to In-Stat.
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