TDG are also claiming current market share as Symbian (51%), Microsoft (17%), and Linux (24%). We know Symbian shipped roughly 33 million phones last year, but if the market shares number really are what TDG claims we would like to know where the 15 million Linux smartphones or the 10 million Windows Mobile smartphones are hiding. Bill Gates recently said Microsoft powered smartphones sales amounted to roughly 3.5 million. Linux smartphone have not yet made any significant impact with (and this is being generous with the definition) around 1 million shipped last year. Have a look at the Canalys figures for Q3 2005 to confirm this.
The answer to this TDG contradiction - is that they are simply wrong and did very bad research or they have used a dodgy definition of advanced mobile devices. For the current figures the Microsoft figure appears inexplicable, but 10 million Linux phones my be justifiable if you include lots of feature phones (no 3rd party software, feature poor). As for the future figures - any thing is theoretically possible - but with Nokia the undisputed leading smartphones manufacturer and Nokia firmly in the Symbian camp for such a prediction to be fulfilled both Symbian and Nokia would have to perform disastrously. The contributions of Sony Ericsson, other Symbian licensees and especially DoCoMo FOMA phones should not be under estimated (all of these would need to switch the Windows Mobile or Linux for this prediction to come true). Perhaps the one factor that could explain this would be a Nokia / S60 switch to Linux, but this is exceedingly unlikely given the technical, ecosystem and financial investment both lost and needed for it to happen, not to mention the inevitable risk of such a move.
The report does make some interesting points. It says China will be an important market - that's true, but it is going to take a while for true smartphones to become established. It seems likely that EMEA and North America markets are going to be the biggest contributors to overall sales in smartphones for quite a few more years yet. Linux is currently very strong in China (some estimates suggest it has 40%+ market share), but this is mainly among feature phones. Questions are increasingly being asked about Linux's ability to be a platform for true smartphones. There are concerns over the ability to add native applications, the true cost of Linux development (the code may be free, but the integration isn't and fundamentally its not designed to be a mobile OS) and the increasing fragmentation of offering removing any platform advantage.
TDG's point about tight integration between the Mobile and the PC is valid, and up until now this has been Windows Mobile strengths. However with ActiveSync licensed to both Symbian, Nokia and Sony Ericsson and the newer handsets being Exchange enabled this advantage is considerably reduced. Furthermore the market (China) which TDG identifies as the growth area is the one where consumers are unlikely to have a PC to integrate with.
TDG is also right that integration with other platforms and systems is important. Symbian have demonstrated an agnostic approach to push email (believed to be a growth area) which is in contrast to their competition. TDG is right to stress the importance of developers and this is one area where Symbian could be doing better.
TDG also say that we should watch SaveJe and other native Java OS. This is a threat to symbian in the mid tier, but they have not done anything spectacular yet despite being around for some time. Ultimately Java is not as well suited for creating a low level OS as it rivals.
Symbian does face competition in the high end from Microsoft and in the mid tier from Linux and manufacturers own OS. However most analysts miss the point that Symbian is competing in both areas. When talking about cost savings from using a single platform across a portfolio of phone Symbian still has the most compelling argument.