Although a wide range of mobile handheld devices are available in the market, the operating systems, the hub of the devices, are dominated by just few major organizations.
The following two lists show the operating systems used in the top brands of smart cellular phones and PDAs in descending order of market share today:
Smart cellular phones: Symbian OS, Microsoft Smartphone, Palm OS, Linux, and RIM OS.
PDAs: Microsoft Pocket PC, Palm OS, RIM OS, and Linux.
The market share is changing frequently and claims concerning the share vary enormously.
It is almost impossible to predict which will be the ultimate winner in the battle of mobile operating systems.
According to eTForecasts.com, a worldwide summary of PDA sales by operating system is shown in the following figure.
The scale is millions of units.
Cumulative sales of Palm OS devices will increase from 20M units in 2001 to over 85M devices by year-end 2008.
According to PDA Street, in the global smartphone sector in 2007, Symbian will continue to maintain the 65 percent market share it currently holds.
Palm's share will slip from 14 percent in 2004 to 9 percent in three years, while Microsoft will grow from 12 percent in 2004 to 22 percent in 2007.
