Symbian OS sales soar; MIcrosoft Moves to Dominate PDA Space

Sales of Symbian OS-based smartphones and communicators have risen 201% from quarter 3 of 2003 to quarter 3 of 2004, according to Symbian's latest quarterly report.

Total shipments in 2004 through September were 8.69 million units, compared to 4.89 million Symbian OS devices for the same period in 2003.

A Gartner Research study of July-September sales data found that Microsoft's mobile OS outsold Palm's. During that period, Microsoft's OS accounted for 48.1% of worldwide shipments of PDAs, up from 41.2% the previous year. Palm's share dropped to 29.8% in Q3 2004 from 46.9%. The BlackBerry quadrupled its market share in twelve months to 19.8% from 4.9%.