Market Shares for Phones

WITH ALL THE NOISE, you might not know that Apple does not feature in the top five mobile makers in the world by shipment. Top of the list is Nokia, with 36.4 percent of the global market in 2009, according to market research firm Gartner. Steve Litchfield reminded me of these percentages in an All About Symbian podcast a few months ago. Today, Ciara O'Brien looks at the risks different phones pose to business interests. "The NCircle survey, which question 257 security professionals between February 4th and March 12th, placed Apple iPhones at the top of the (security threat) list, with 57% of those who took naming it as the biggest threat. Only 13% of security professionals think Nokia phones pose a risk. This compares to 39% who viewed Google's Android devices as the greatest risk and 28% for Blackberry." Research firm Gartner is forecasting that Google's Android operating system will surpass Apple's iPhone in global smartphone market share by 2012.

These numbers are simply unbelievable for those who buy their phones for the beauty of the User Experience. To many of my UX friends, all they see is iPhones everywhere--and they're committed to upgrading as fast as possible or they feel left out. Apple's iPhone has won their hearts and minds and it's a real trend--Apple is stealing convergent phone market share from the main players--but it's a trend that may have peaked. Symbian has 46.9% of the convergent phone market, followed by Research in Motion, which has a 19.9% share for Blackberry. Apple has 14.4% of the convergent phone market, ahead of Windows mobile with 8.7% and Android at 3.9%. It will be interesting to see how these data change in one year's time.

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Ciara O'Brien -- "Double-edged sword of smartphones" in the Irish Times, 9 April 2010.

Matt Hamblen -- "Symbian, Android will be top smartpone OSes in 2012" in Computerworld, 13 October 2009.

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