share

The smartphone OS space looks a
whole lot different than it did a year ago. Android
has seriously stepped up to become the top dog,
Symbian is a force no more, and iOS ... well, not
everything changes.

Gartner's November mobile device report gives us
the numbers. Android OS leads the pack with a
52.5% global market share, just about double the
25% it had last summer.

The iOS market share dropped slightly, from 16.6 to
15%. And Symbian continued its slow march to
obsolescence, dropping from a market-leading
36.3% in 2010 to merely 17% this last quarter.

In Gartner's report, analyst Roberta Cozz says two
key factors led to Apple's drop in market share:
consumers waiting for a rumored new iPhone, and
consumers waiting for associated price cuts for
older iPhones. Indeed, that was something Apple
identified in its fourth-quarter earnings report, which
slightly missed analyst expectations.
Now pair that with a slew of strong Android
offerings, from the Droid Bionic and Droid 3 to the
HTC EVO 3D and Photon 4G. Consumers had a
generous variety of large, dual-core Android
stunners to choose from while waiting for Apple to
deliver a new handset.
"Android has a diverse spectrum of devices, ranging
from being inexpensive, well under $100, to high-
end LTE devices. There's a device at every price
point and feature set," Gartner analyst Hugues de la
Vergne says.

Nonetheless, de la Vergne believes iOS will sweep
away market dominance from Android next quarter
(in the US at least), now that Apple has a wide
gamut of iPhones available at a number of price
points.

The Gartner report also notes that Windows Phone's
market share dropped, from 2.7% in the third
quarter of 2010 to only 1.5% this year. Windows
didn't have much going on in the summer, with the
spoils of its partnership with Nokia, namely the
Nokia Lumia 800, only beginning to gain some
prominence this quarter (unfortunately, the phone
won't even be available in the US until 2012). Nokia
only has single-digit market share in the US,
anyway.

Still, with some operators losing faith in RIM, de la
Vergne says, especially as we wait for devices
running BlackBerry's new OS, Windows Phone has a
nice window of opportunity in which it could pick up
some market share