Around 1.2 billion
phones were sold last year, 174 million of which were smartphones. Symbian
devices count for nearly 47 per cent of this market (with Nokia making up the
majority of this figure), but they're losing market share to both Apple and
Research in Motion (RIM), the company behind Blackberry, which now have 14.4
per cent and 19.9 per cent respectively.
The fastest growing
markets last year were Apple and Android, which grew by 6.2 per cent and 3.5
per cent respectively.
Smartphones enable
consumers to download apps, and now there are app stores everywhere, courtesy
of device manufacturers (eg Nokia's Ovi Store); OS developers (Android Market Place;
Windows Marketplace for Mobile); operators
(Vodafone's 360 Store; Orange's
Application Shop) and Independents (GetJar; Handango). All are competing
fiercely for eyeballs, clicks and sales.
At the moment, the
Apple App Store is the undisputed champion; in January, it announced that three
billion apps had been downloaded over the last 18 months. Others are catching
up, though, with Nokia now proclaiming that it has broken the 1.5million app
sales per day mark as of March.
The UK mobile scene
According to the AdMob report on smartphone usage trends for January, 75 per
cent of requests came from a combination of the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.
The next most popular were Nokia and HTC on 4.8 per cent and 4.7 per cent
respectively.
With Apple firmly
set with the top two handset models, it's left to HTC's Hero and Dream and
Nokia's N95 to complete the top five UK smartphone handsets….Read
more.
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