Mobile OS Share

Interesting chart on OS share in the context of the Nokia Symbian deal today showing shipments and share from Q3 of last year when the IPhone launched. The biggest thing of note was the dominance of Symbian worldwide, particularly in contrast to US share.

The most interesting thing is the regional breakout. Microsoft share for example in North America is quite large but it's almost negligible when compared to every other region which are Symbian dominated.

However, most of these companies have been plugging away at the OS market for almost a decade now. What do these charts show Apple has done? While worldwide share of shipments for Apple's new Iphone were close to nil during the measured- and somewhat dated- period, it's pretty astounding to see how quickly Apple gained relatively large share in North America when you examine the regional breakout. Remember when it launched Apple had minimal if any worldwide contracts. Also, the places it had contracts were countries were a 2G product was viewed as less than compelling and they came later in the quarter.

How easy would it be for it to get those kind of numbers in all of these new regions. The Iphone is again hitting in Q3 one year later (2008), and now has a truly global launch rather than just AT&T in North America. So one wonders what will happen to the share numbers once if these markets behave similarly to what happened in North America. What is Nokia's bet here with this Symbian move? Can Nokia innovate toe to toe with Apple?

How will these companies be affected and respond? Who will be impacted most severely? Who will hang in there and keep fighting for mobile share?

My gut is that Apple will wrestle it out with one or two other OS but the rest will slowly drift away over time after initial large share losses.