According to researchers at
Canalys, smartphone worldwide shipments are still growing apace. In their
latest report they found that during the second quarter of this year volumes grew 105 per cent year-on-year with over 12 million smart phones sold. Other key points:
- Overall global shipments of smart mobile devices up 105% year on year in Q2 2005
- Converged devices up 186%, handhelds down 14%
- Nokia's share grew to 55%, with it shipping 6.7 million smart phones
- Palm retains second place as its smart phones grew more than 200%, but handhelds fell 32%
- RIM, in third, ships almost 900,000 converged devices, on target for its first million-unit quarter
Like in the
first quarter of this year, Palm's further drop in handheld shipments was counterbalanced by the continued success of the company's Treo smartphones in both North America and EMEA. One reason for the success of smartphones and converged devices is because their are subsidized by mobile operators, which makes them relatively less expensive then handheld computers.
Symbian still rules among smartphone operating systems with two-third of the market. Market research firm IDC also affirms Symbian's dominance in
another study released this week which states that Symbian's market share was roughly 56 percent worldwide in 2004.