Smartphone Penetration..

[Guest sgray]

Hiya,

I was wondering if you guys can help me. I am trying to pull together some research regarding the proliferation of smartphones. I have tried contacting the network operators, but they haven't been particularly forthcoming with info and I have also tried contacting some research agencies, but even the top line information I am looking for requires me to part with quite a lot of money, which I don't have right now, so I thought I would see if anyone here can point me in the right direction.

Essentially I am trying to find out the stats for the past 24 months to show:

- How many smartphones are connected to the UK mobile networks

- How many of each model have been connected (both MS and Non-MS based)

- Which network they are connected to

If I can get a European or Global view that would be extremely useful too

I know this may be a tall order, but I am hoping that people here may have a source for this info, and can point me in the right direction(s).

Thanks in advance!

Simon

[Guest Tunney]

The last round-up of all the different companies I saw was this report here.

It includes non-connected devices but the figures are roughly:

Symbian - 6.6mil units - 61% market share

Microsoft - 2.0mil units - 18% market share

PalmSource - 1.1mil units - 11% market share

RIM - 0.8mil units - 7% market share

Others - 0.3mil units - 3% market share

Take away non-connected devices (i.e. just smartphones) and I would estimate it to look more like this:

Symbian - 6.6mil units - 74% market share

Microsoft - 1.0mil units - 11% market share

RIM - 0.8mil units - 9% market share

PalmSource - 0.4mil units - 4% market share

Others - 0.1mil units - 1% market share

That's based on Symbian and RIM being smartphone only players, Microsoft selling roughly 50:50 smartphones/non-connected PDAs and Palm's recent announced that they've sold 1 million Treos.

Europe and the UK are likely to be even more skewed towards Symbian as they're traditionally a Nokia stronghold and most of Symbian's sales are through Nokia. I don't have any figures though. Palm is virtually non-existant in Europe.

Edited June 7, 2005 by Tunney

[Guest sgray]

Hey Tunney,

Thanks for the info, certainly a great start!

Have you seen any UK/European specific information on your travels? It would be a massive benefit to get breakdown by operator, but I think this is quite hard to get on the net - and its almost impossible to get from the operators!

Simon

[Guest Tunney]

Gathering information is pretty tricky.

Microsoft don't publish anything about how many smartphones their partners sell. Symbian announce a total, but don't break it down by phone or by operator. Again, Nokia announce how many smartphones they've sold, but no real specifics apart from that they've sold over a million N-Gages now. Not sure about Palm beyond their recent announcement announcement of a million Treos. HTC seem to only announce their revenue and not units shipped.

Sorry, I can't really help any further. ;)