While it is clear that Nokia had taken hands off Symbian ever since Windows Phone took over as its primary smartphone focus, its fall from the top spot was nothing less than dramatic. Within a year, it has gone from being the worlds most used mobile Operating Systems to one which has experienced probably the fastest loss in market share for any platform.
Anyway, according to latest data from research firm IDC, Android has overtaken Symbian for the first time in India and now accounts for 42.4% of the smartphone market share in India. As seen elsewhere, Android showed exceptional growth rate in India too – growing at over 90% compared to just the last quarter!
That said, things are looking better for Nokia this time though. As the tradition is, it leads the market share in India accounting for 31.8 % of the market share in India. In second place is Samsung which lies at second place with 17.5% of the market. Things look better for Samsung in the smartphone sector where it has narrowed the gap between Nokia and themselves. Here, too, Nokia accounts for 35.3 % of the share while Samsung has inched closer with 26% of the market. Unless, Nokia manages to do exceptionally well with its new Windows Phones’ we might as see role reversals in this sectorreal soon – especially since a bulk of Nokia’s smartphone share was due to its Symbian handsets.
Apple’s iOS in spite of being termed expensive by many still managed to garner 3.09% of the smartphone market. This was better than its show of 2.6% in Q2 2011.
It also seems to be a good time to be a mobile phone maker in India. The market has seen 12% growth in the total number of units shipped. IDC expects the growth rate to continue in the forthcoming quarters as well.
