When it comes to smartphone market share in the United States, the BlackBerry is still king of the hill according to a recent report by comScore, however, Android is coming on strong.
For the three month period ending Feb. 10, RIM’s percentage of market share was 42.1%, up 1.3% from the same period a year earlier. Android is still just a fraction of the total smartphone market at 9%, however, they were the only other platform to actually increase share, up 5.2% year over year. Apple remained relatively flat, down 0.1%, and Palm and Microsoft lost share, with -1.8% and -4.0% drops year over year.
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Rumors about BlackBerry Application Suite for Windows Mobile have been floating around the interwebs for well over a year. Back in December of 2008 RIM got it running on an HTC Pro and they even demonstrated a few months later at Mobile World Congress.
Today, a leaked version of BlackBerry Application Suite for Windows Mobile is floating around the interwebs…
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The Microsoft Zune is undergoing scheduled maintenance that started early this morning at 1:00 a.m. EST. This isn’t terribly big news unless you are a Zune user. 3 phone profiles being found in the Zune.inf file of the maintenance release, is, however, kind of big… Especially since Microsoft has repeatedly stated that they had no plans to add mobile phone to the Zune since before the original Zune came out.
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Microsoft used to have a program where they would reimburse employees for data plans on smartphones like the BlackBerry, Google Android devices, the iPhone, Palm Pre, and, of course, Windows Mobile devices.
Well in order to cut costs, Microsoft has decided to stop reimbursing employees for data on any devices that doesn’t run Windows Mobile, even of those employees that use their smart phone significantly for work.
My theory on why Microsoft would do this is that the flack they would take for continuing to subsidize Windows Mobile powered devices after cutting everything else would be far less brutal and embarrassing than the possible mass exodus of Windows Mobile users to other devices if employees had to pay for them themselves.
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I just heard some unbelievable spin coming out of Microsoft this morning. They expect Windows Mobile to account for 40% of the global smartphone market within the next four years.
Did Microsoft make a bid for Research in Motion or Apple recently? If not, this is the most ridiculous thing that I’ve heard all day. Granted, today isn’t even half over yet, but, still.
Depending on whose numbers you look at, Microsoft has less than 13% of the global smartphone market now. Apple and Research in Motion are growing by leaps and bounds and lets not forget about Linux based mobile operating systems. I know Linux isn’t big here, but, it is getting big about everywhere else.
For Microsoft to be able to pull off an additional 27% of the global market share in the next 4 years they are going to have to come up with an OS better than the BlackBerry OS and better than the iPhone OS. Unless they do a do-over, I doubt that Microsoft could even make Windows Mobile stable within the next 4 years, let along out shine RIM or Apple.
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