While doing research for a blog about smartphones, I came across some figures which blew the whole idea for my blog out of the water. The Symbian Operating System is not very well known here in the US, with roughly a 5 percent market share of smartphone sales. However, Symbian smartphones make up well over 50 percent of the smartphone market worldwide. RIM (think Blackberry) is in second place worldwide, and the Apple iPhone in third place with 6.5 percent. (Figures from February 2008 report by Canalys and
“Canalys, Symbian: Apple iPhone Already Leads Windows Mobile in US Market Share, Q3 2007” from Roughly Drafted online magazine) .

The Symbian OS is a proprietary operating system, designed for mobile devices. Note that it is Symbian and not Simian. Symbian is jointly owned by Nokia, Ericsson, Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, Siemens, and Samsung. (see Symbian OS article in Wikipedia).

An example of a smartphone which runs Symbian is the Nokia N95 Smartphone. The N95 is loaded with features: 5 Megapixel Camera with flash, FM Radio, MP3 Player, Video Capture and playback, voice Recorder, productivity applications and web browsing. The N95 is expensive as no US carrier has picked up the phone. However, since it is unlocked and Quad-band, it can be used on any GSM network anywhere in the world.

Posted on May 3rd, 2008 by mervyn