Windows Mobile loses nearly a third of market share
Windows Mobile lost 28 percent of its smartphone market share between last year’s third quarter and this year’s third quarter, according to market researcher Gartner.
Figures released Thursday by Gartner show that Microsoft’s mobile OS had 11 percent of the global smartphone market in Q3 2008. A year later, it had 7.9 percent. Meanwhile, the iPhone’s share rose from 12.9 percent to 17.1 percent, and Research In Motion’s share jumped from 16 percent to 20.8 percent.
Symbian’s share fell from 49.7 percent to 44.6 percent over the same period–a 10 percent drop. The open-source Android OS from Google had no market share in Q3 2008 because it had only recently been introduced. In Q3 2009, however, it had 3.9 percent share.
“From one side, the market is going open source,” Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza said. “On the other side, they have more closed environments like Apple and RIM. Microsoft is caught in the middle. They have to think hard [about] what they can do.”
