Gartner has released smartphone market share statistics for 2008 and iPhone saw the largest rise in market share. Though Nokia still rules the smartphone market, its market share went down from 49.4 percent in 2007 to 43.7 percent in 2008. RIM was in the second place with sales of 23 million BlackBerry devices, their market share for 2008 was 16.6 percent up from 9.6 percent in 2007. In third place it was Apple with sales of 11 million iPhone. Apple’s market share rose from 2.7 percent in 2007 to 8.2 percent in 2008. HTC and Sharp were in fourth and fifth place respectively.

On the smartphone operating system side Symbian was number one, but their market share dropped from 63.5 percent in 2007 to 52.4 percent in 2008. Second placed RIM and fourth place Apple profited from Symbian’s downfall. RIM’s Blackberry OS gained 7 percent market and reached 16.6 percent in 2008, whereas Apple’s Mac OS X market share jumped from 2.7 percent in 2007 to 8.2 percent in 2008. Microsoft Windows Mobile was in third place and its market share dropped from 12.0 percent in 2007 to 11.8 percent in 2008. Similarly Linux based smartphone OS also saw a drop from 9.6 percent in 2007 to 8.1 percent in 2008.

Overall, Global sales of smartphone for 2008 reached 139.3 million devices, up from 122.3 million in 2007 – a rise of 13.9 percent compared with 2007. Gartner’s Roberta Cozza believes “In 2009, mobile platforms will be a major battleground as the associated user experience and role of the ecosystem grow in importance.”
[Via Gartner]