Android On the Rise, Apple iOS Steady; Whither 塞班?

For all the talk of Apple's iOS and Google's Android, the market champion globally has been Nokia's 塞班. 至少在2010年底之前是这样. 当我们准备世界移动通信大会, 在巴塞罗那2月14日至17日, news of 塞班's decline makes it sound like we're about ready to enter a two-OS mobile world.

在美国手机市场, 塞班 didn't really make the leap across the smartphone chasm, so it's been in the news less and less as first Apple's proprietary iOS and then Google's open-source Android emerged. Yet it remains a dominant player in a number of global markets, including those emerging markets whose handset numbers dwarf the U.S. 和欧洲的总和.

Canalys, a research firm with offices in Singapore, the UK and the U.S.，发布了研究 on Monday that indicated 塞班's sales for the fourth quarter of 2010 were at 31 million, 从23个显著增加.一年前是900万.

Yet Apple's shipment of iPhones increased from 8.700万至1600万.2 million per quarter for the same timeframe, and Android's sale skyrocketed from 8.7% of the global market in the fourth quarter of 2009 to represent almost 32.9% of the global 智能手机市场 at the end of 2010, on sales of 33.3 million Android-based smartphones in Q4 2010.

就其本身而言, 诺基亚不会轻易放弃, although it's done better in the feature phone market rather than the 智能手机市场, and the company's recently brought in a new chief executive officer to turn the company back toward market domination.

据路透社报道, new CEO Stephen Elop will unveil a new strategy for Nokia on the Friday before 世界移动通信大会 starts. Nokia's plans include more aggressive marketing in the U.S. and perhaps even Android-based smartphones, Reuters says.

If Nokia chooses to take 塞班 out of the running, and if it lets its MeeGo Linux derivative go in favor of Android, 这对市场来说意味着什么?

寻找线索, 让我们来看看一月份的两项公告, the first just prior to the Consumer Electronics Show and the second just yesterday.

一月初, Nielsen announced numbers that showed how Google had begun to close the gap on Apple in the U.S. 智能手机市场.

在2010年下半年, more than 40 percent of smartphones sold in the United States were based around the Android operating system.

Android的销量激增是一方面, buoyed as it is by a number of newer devices such as the 三星 Galaxy S and Nexus S, 但是总体市场份额呢?

It turns out that Nielsen reported the Android 市场份额 was 25.在美国占8%.S. 智能手机市场, a bit behind both 研究 In Motion (RIM) at 26.1%，苹果28%.6%的U.S. 市场份额.

RIM, 该公司声称, was "within the margin of error of both Apple iOS and Android" operating systems.

"Apple's clear lead over Android notwithstanding, 这场比赛可能仍难分胜负,尼尔森猜测道, 基于11月底的数据.

但是昨天，研究公司NPD 所述 that Android is now the leading operating system, based on data showing that Android increased its sales percentages in the last quarter of 2010.

While Nielsen showed 40% of sales fell Android's way in the U.S. 2010年下半年的智能手机市场, NPD is saying that Android sales made up 50% of smartphone sales in the United States in the last three months of 2010.

NPD notes that Android only reaches a dominant position in terms of a divide-and-conquer approach, spreading out across numerous phones in much the same way that Microsoft spread out across a number of desktop computers when Apple was still playing in the single-hardware Macintosh world.

Apple's iPhone 4 was the top-selling smartphone in the fourth quarter of 2010, and its iPhone 3GS was the fourth best selling phone in that same timeframe. 其他三个排名靠前的位置, 然而, were held by Android devices: Droid X by Motorola was number two, EVO by HTC was third and Motorola's Droid 2 was fifth. 当然，随着 Verizon iPhone 4, it's possible the pendulum will swing back to Apple dominating three of the top five slots.

有这样的数字, it's easy to see how we could easily be facing a two-OS world when it comes to smartphones. 有一家公司为H.264和另一个WebM, we may very well face a prolonged period of time where the two-OS world and the two-codec worlds collide.