IT-Review

Symbian Captures 88% Market Share

Research and Markets, research firm has announced that Symbian has captured 88 percent market share in the advanced OS segment at the End of 2003.

Research and Markets has announced the addition of Symbian Leads Pack of Advanced Mobile OS Vendors, But It's A Long Way to the Finish Line to their offering.

Wireless voice and data applications will continue to multiply and fragment across regions, networks and devices. No single wireless device type will emerge as the preferred platform for delivering advanced voice, data, and entertainment services over GPRS/EDGE, CDMA2000 1x EV/EV-DX, or WCDMA networks. Forward-thinking mobile software and hardware vendors are positioning their solutions to enable the implementation of applications across a broad range of end-user terminals with standardized, modular hardware and software architectures.

This approach offers the best promise for addressing the multiple disparate demand characteristics of fragmented global markets. Microprocessor vendors such as Motorola, Texas Instruments, Intel and Philips are offering advanced architectures that seek to effectively partition applications and communications processing requirements while enabling optimized plug-and-play support for a broad range of enabling technologies. Advanced mobile operating system vendors are taking a similar approach to applications, with flexible architectures befitting a range of device and application types.

Symbian is the most widely distributed of these advanced, binary mobile operating systems, having captured 88 percent market share in the advanced OS segment at the end of 2003. Although Symbian's success to date is notable, it is largely thanks to Nokia's support. The overall advanced OS segment of the market is poised for rapid growth but still comprised less than 2 percent of total global handset sales in 2003. Symbian's market leadership in the nascent advanced OS category is less significant than the potential value proposition of common underlying OS architectures as a means of ensuring rapid, cost-effective provisioning of advanced services across different hardware platforms.

This report examines the significance of Symbian's early success on the global wireless services/terminal relationship.

Source: press release

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