The market for smartphones, an important field for device software, looks strong, says market research firm Canalys. Global shipments of smart mobile devices rose by 75 percent in the third quarter, relative to the year-earlier quarter. What's more, the market is shifting very quickly to converged smartphones: Shipments of standalone handhelds actually fell by 18 percent, Canalys says, while those for converged smartphones more than doubled in volume.
By vendor, it was a good quarter for Nokia. The Finnish phone maker shipped a record 7.1 million smartphones, 142 percent more than it did a year earlier. That gave it a 55 percent share of the worldwide smart mobile-device market. The No. 2 vendor by share was Palm, which had a mixed report card; while its third-quarter shipments fell 2 percent overall, shipments of its Treo smartphones rose by more than 70 percent, overtaking the company's handhelds for first time and giving Palm an 8 percent market share. These two leaders were followed by RIM (7.5 percent market share), Motorola (5.3 percent), Hewlett-Packard (4.2 percent), and good old Other (20 percent), says Canalys.
Linux is making a mark in the smartphone business. Motorola shipped more than 690,000 smartphones in the third quarter, up from fewer than 62,000 units a year earlier, and the company was helped "significantly" by shipments its Linux-based smart phones in China. According to Canalys, the Moto phones' handwriting recognition capabilities have proved popular among Chinese consumers.
For more information on the report, see this Canalys press release.
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