Mobile platform statistics

I’ve done some searching for statistics on different types mobile platforms and their current global uptake. Here is a what I’ve found.

Platform	Amount (millions)	Notes
Java	700M	Total shipped, end of 2005 Most phones are feature phones, a fact that is reflected in this figure. I wonder what the MIDP 1/2 split is?
Flash Lite	77M	Total shipped, Q1 2006 This figure is based mostly on the somewhat lacking 1.1 release My guess: Flash Lite will be the biggest riser in coming years
Symbian	70.5M	Total shipped, Q1 2006 Any other categories than UIQ and Series 60?
Series 60	50M	Total shipped, Feb 2006 Will probably rise as the product portfolio of Nokia seems to become more S60 based
Linux	11.6M	Shipped during 2005 This figure is surely to rise, as companies are looking to cut R&D costs
Windows Mobile for Smartphones	4.5M	Shipped during 2005 They have the budget, the will and the developer community..
PalmOS	1.75M	Shipped during 2005 A sinking ship?
Brew	-	Anybody?

All of these platforms are wildly different, but they share the capability of enabling third-party content and/or applications run on the device (this Wikipedia page has an excellent overview of the differences). If you can spot any errors or omissions, please leave a comment.

Conclusion: Java/MIDP is by far the most popular platform with its huge installed base. Symbian, and in particular Series 60, has a strong hold of the Smartphone segment, where the challengers are Windows and Linux (it will be interesting to see how that battle works out).

Flash Lite is an interesting technology that will no doubt gain widespread support given time, but sadly the improved 2.0 version isn’t currently being shipped on many devices (Nokia has e.g. started shipping some devices with the older version). For those who are interested and do not have a phone shipping with Flash Lite, versions 1.1 and 2.0 can be bought directly from Adobe for various devices)

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Published:: June 27, 2006 / 13:07

Category:: General, Mobile industry, Mobile technology

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Lifeblog 6.30.06 / 4pm

Got mobile platform stats? Anders does….

Some interesting stats collected and brought into one place by Anders. He’s looking at the different mobile platforms. I am impressed that there are 700M Java phones, though he doesn’t split them between MIDP 1 or 2 (and of course,…

alindh 7.3.06 / 1pm

True, SMS and voice is still the only universal “platform” on mobiles. Hopefully this will change quickly. I left XHTML out on purpose, as I couldn’t find any stats on the browsers (if anyone has any figures related to mobile browsers, please leave a comment). My hunch is that WAP browsers are quite common (>500M?) and that support for basic XHTML exists in many phones (>100M?, e.g. all S60 phones should be XHTML capable). Still, the huge differences in browsers is a problem, as services and sites need to take into account quite many parameters (e.g. compared to desktop based web services, where there are a handful of different alternatives).

raddedas 7.7.06 / 10pm

a few more things for you:

– Java is on 708m devices not 700m, according to the page you link to (a small %age for Java, but huge for the others!); couldn’t find more recent figures sadly, I reckon there are more MIDP2 devices in active use than MIDP1 now

– Symbian also ships on DoCoMo’s FOMA phones, this is a locked down version without the ability to install 3rd party apps. These probably account for most non-S60 sales.

– Flash on some handsets is very limited (eg. Samsung D600) and can’t be used for standalone apps / web pages.

It would be great to get properly comparitive stats for the other platforms and Flash 1.1 vs 2.0 figures, plus some idea of how much overlap there is – I’d imagine very few of the (non-BREW) handsets in the list don’t have Java.

Mobile Phone Development » Blog Archive » Mobile Platform Market Shares 7.25.06 / 10am

[...] Thinking about starting a new mobile project? Anders Lindh of Flyer One Ltd has put together a useful list of programmable platforms and their market shares. [...]

David Beers 7.25.06 / 5pm

If only the breakdown were this simple! J2ME MIDP is currently so fragmented that for all practical purposes (development, testing, deployment) it’s a collection of related but incompatible platforms. S60 is broken into 2nd and 3rd edition now, which are again related, but binary incompatible. Same with Symbian (7.0 and 9.0). Linux is not really a platform so much as a kernel: there are many different application frameworks that run on Linux (Opie, GPE, Qtopia, plus many custom APIs in Asia), and Windows Mobile is split between incompatible Smartphone and PocketPC editions, in addition to having incompatibilities across versions.

One interesting platform option you missed that can cover Symbian, Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Linux is SuperWaba. The SuperWaba SDK is a Java language API with its own (non-J2ME) libraries and VM that you can distribute for free with your applications. It’s open source and well suited to smartphone development. http://www.superwaba.com for more info.

Impersonation Failure : Mobile platform development options 7.26.06 / 9am

[...] Mobile platform development options Came across an interesting link via Simon Judge’s Mobile Phone Development blog with a list of current programmable platforms and their market shares. At the moment Java is still clearly the most pervasive platform, available on 700M handsets followed by Flash Lite with just over 10% of that at 77M and Symbian (S60 alone 50M) with 70.5M. [Links] Mobile platform statistics today – Anders Lindh (FlyerOne Ltd) Mobile Development on Wikipedia – A breakdown of differences between the most popular mobile development options. powered by IMHO 1.3 Share this post: Email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! [...]

Wilmer 8.22.06 / 9pm

I want to know, which is the percentage of mobiles for nokia, motorola and others?

Fuel Cellular 10.3.06 / 4pm

Hi .. this is a brilliant find. Thanks for
sharing the great info with me.
What’s interesting for me is the more
I read your stuff the more I find this
blog (post) so helpful……
Also it’s great to read other
people’s posts……

my random thoughts

Mobile platform statistics

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