Linux and Smartphone Trends

The headline for a Canalys research report published earlier this year reads "Smart phones up, handhelds down". According to the report global shipments of smartphones were up 105% YTY in Q2 2005, but handhelds (PDAs) sales were down 14%. This trend seems logical. As smartphones get smarter they become our personal assistant. One device is also cheaper and one device less to carry.

Maybe a more interesting thing to mention and speculate on is the operating system trend. According to the Canalys report the market share is divided as follows:

- Symbian 62.8 %
- Microsoft 15.9%
- PalmSource 9.5%
- Others 11,9%

In the figures above you can popably translate others to Linux, something that reports from market research firms IDC and Gartner also confirms. According to IDC the Symbian was used in 56%, Microsoft's Windows mobile platform in 13% and Linux in 11% of smartphones sold in 2004. A Gartner report released this summer says embedded Linux powered 14% of smartphones shipped worldwide in Q1 of 2005 and that figure was up 412% from 3.4% in Q1 2004.

The future of Linux on smartphones and "mobile terminals" in general seems bright if smartphones sales continue to grow more than 100% a year and if the growth of Linux as an OS on those phones continues to grow as it does now. According to a report by the Dublin-based Research & Markets, mobile devices based on full-feature operating systems will grow to about 290 million in 2008, or 42.5% of all handsets. The report also states that while Symbian will be the market share leader for 1 to 3 years, Linux will threaten for long-term dominance. Gartner also backs up this theory and says smartphones are the fastest-growing portion of the whole "mobile terminal" market and that they would reach 200 million by 2008.

I do not want to speculate too much on the future, but I think it´s safe to say Linux will do well. The future seems bright in terms of the above presented statistics, but one has to consider other things also. Anything can happen, like in December last year, when PalmSource announced its plans to migrate to Linux. And we know that Symbian, traditionally strong in smartphones, now wants to move into the mid-range feature phone space also. Examples of this is the Nokia 3230 and the Nokia 3250. Then we have Windows Mobile 5.0 coming and Microsoft´s teaming up with Flextronics to develop a mobile phone platform for low-cost feature phones. What OS will your next phone be running on?

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