OSNews

Take a look at South Korea - you'll be suprised!

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-KR-monthly-201007-201105

Edited 2011-06-30 08:44 UTC

What about North Korea?

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-KP-monthly-201007-201105

I guess The Great Leader had a bit of a falling out with Jobs at the March 2011 Evil Leaders Of The World meeting.

Change the time scale to eliminate the noise and see the long-term picture, too It's quite interesting...

World-wide : iOS slowly fades into irrelevance at the same rate that Android grows, Symbian is not as dead as lots of people think, and despite a good effort RIM are now sinking too...
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-weekly-200851-201126

Africa : Direct illustration of how important building OSs which run on cheap phones is important. Gimmicky apps won't save a product if it's simply overpriced compared to how much people are willing to pay.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-af-weekly-200851-201126

Asia : Symbian's losing, Android's growing, the rest is essentially stagnating
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-as-weekly-200851-201126

Europe : iOS is particularly strong and Symbian is particularly weak there. Here, iOS is relatively stable, as Android grows at the expense of Symbian
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-eu-weekly-200851-201126

N. America : Rise and fall of giants... iOS crashing in flames, Android rising pretty quickly, RIM struggling but not dead yet.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-na-weekly-200851-201126

Oceania : Say hello to iPhone ! I don't know what has happened there (maybe someone can explain), but iOS sure seems to be extremely popular. There seems to be some flawed measurements around, though, judging by how wildly the numbers vary. Perhaps, there simply enough data to do stats on, like in Antarctica.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-oc-weekly-200851-201126

S. America : iOS is dead after a momentary burst of popularity, Android's struggling but slowly growing, and Symbian's losing ground. Only spectacular variation is bada here, which has apparently implanted itself quite well.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-sa-weekly-200851-201126

Edited 2011-06-30 09:28 UTC

re Oceania.

Very few Android phones were available in Australia until about six months ago.

Oceania is a mere 30 million people btw.

Interestingly, MS doesn't even have enough market share to show up on the US specific version:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-US-weekly-200851-201126

HP's WebOS, however, does. Just goes to show how little there is of WP7.

I agree with your assessment completely. Hence the aggressive litigation tactics of both companies. Both Microsoft and Apple is scared of the Android juggernaut.

The signs were there a year ago. I remember lots of members here and on slashdot predicted Apple's resurgence once their handsets become available on other networks - a very US centric way of thinking. And even there, it didn't work out as expected. In fact, looking at the North American figures after the Verizon launch, you'll see...nothing. No change in the trend. Not even a tiny blip.

Then the theory (still in circulation) is that both will grow in parallel, eating up RIM, Symbian, and what's left of WinMO market share. Wrong again. It is clear now that in many countries, Android is eating Apple's lunch. Another prediction is that Android growth will be based on dirt cheap handsets manufactured in mom and pop shops in China. Wrong again. In fact, in most developing countries iOS is still going strong (it's still a status symbol there) - but we have a very different picture in the two leading economies in Asia. Basically, the Apple market collapsed in Korea. From a 70% market share they dropped down to 3-4% while Android grew to 95%. Japan is following, albeit more slowly. And then there is Taiwan, where again, Android is wiping the floor with Apple on the high end - the only segment of the market Apple cares about.

This is a significant change, because services on handsets become more and more "social" - they depend on numbers. Think Facetime - facetime needs the numbers it still enjoys in the west to be attractive. Think about the ad market - again, it depends on numbers. It's a bit like social networking - the more people are on either platform, the better that platform becomes. Latitude works best if most of your close friends and family are on Android. Etc.

So it's not Android on the low-end with cheap Chinese handsets and Apple on the lucrative high-end as both companies and dozens of analysts predicted. I haven't seen any low-end Android phones around here (I live in Vietnam). It's all symbian here, Apple is still trendy, but now ordinary people (ie not geeks) already heard the name Android. I don't mean to predict Apple's demise just yet, but they feel threatened. And they should be.

Edited 2011-06-30 15:20 UTC

It should be noted that those numbers are for OS share, and include the iPod Touch, iPads, Android tablets, etc (although, realistically, the iPod is the only one that really makes a difference). Looking purely at smartphones, Android is dominating almost every Western market and had a narrow lead over Symbian worldwide at the end of 2010.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/18/smartphone-market-...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone#Operating_system_market_sha...