Mobile market overview

Here you find my best attempt so far at summarizing the mobile market. I started with browsers, because that’s my specialty, but then the table branched off into other directions almost by itself.

In principle the table only treats the smartphone space, but some feature phone vendors are branching off into that space, and I do want to keep an eye on the possibility that one of these OSs breaks through to the smartphone market.

Currently the table contains .

It does not always make sense to compare two columns; for instance, the proliferation and OSvendor columns have very little to do with each other. I’m counting on your common sense here.

See the browser page for more information about the browsers.

I will add more information, such as about the app stores, when I’ve solved certain technical difficulties in the data-reading script. I may also add market share numbers for device vendors and OSs when I figure out how to display them.

The table

Recent changes

3 July 2011

• Added NetFront Life browser.
• Removed Windows Phone 7 from Sony Ericsson.
• Added QNX OS.

March?

• Renamed Brew to Brew MP, which is the latest version of the OS, and it also allows apps (and thus is technically a smartphone OS). I hope all vendors I name actually sell Brew MP.
• Opera Mobile also runs on Brew MP. Added.

16 February 2011

• Added Nokia as a Windows Phone 7 user.
• Removed Windows Mobile. It’s nearly dead, and sales will cease this year.
• Removed a few minor Android vendors and added INQ, the creator of the Facebook phone and, I think, a rising star.

Upcoming changes

In the next few months I’ll incorporate the following changes in the table. These changes are already somewhat visible in the market, but haven’t quite panned out yet.

• More device vendors will start to make Android devices. I need to create a rule for when a device vendor is shown in the table, or it will be overflowing with minor Android vendors that don’t really count in the worldwide state of affairs.
• NetFront will disappear from the smartphone market. It just doesn’t innovate fast enough.
• The browsers currently shown as MeeGo actually run on Maemo.
• It is conceivable that other device vendors will follow Samsung’s and LG’s lead and develop their own WebKit-based browser for their own mid-range or low-end OSs.