Canalys released new research today showing smart mobile device market growth remaining steady at 55%. So what does it all mean for the average mobile developer?

First of all, smart phones are replacing PDAs. Nothing that exciting there. Secondly, Nokia Symbian (Series 60) phones continue to make up the largest proportion of smart devices sold. Again, nothing new.

All this should be put into perspective. Let’s be kind and say 20 million smart phones are shipped every quarter this year. That’s 80 million phones… out of a projected 1 billion… about 8%.

So what of the 55% growth? Well, the growth of all phones is about 31% anyway so 55% doesn’t sound that large. At the current rate of (55%) compound growth there will be about 192 million smartphones sold in 2008. This is less than the 200 million Symbian previously forecast just for itself! I say ‘previously’ because if you look at the Symbian web site you will find it’s recently been downgraded to 200 million by 2010 (instead of 2008).

So which ’smart’ OS is accelerating the most to fill that 92%? Well, at the moment, none of them so as to make a significant affect on the short-term market.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 at 3:56 pm and is filed under Symbian, Series 60, UIQ, Windows Mobile, Mobile, Mobile Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.