Q3 09 Canalys smartphone data shows RIM increasing 40% over 2008

Canalys posted their 3rd quarter 2009 figures and as you can RIM had an amazing year going from 15.2% to 20.6% of the global market share (an increase of 40.8%). A bit surprisingly to me, Nokia actually saw a 6% increase in its market share too while Apple predictibly increased 6.7% over the year with the iPhone 3GS release helping. Windows Mobile suffered quite a bit with a 33.1% drop in market share over the past year and with the release of the minor 6.5 update I don't see that trend changing much over the next year either. Google Android finally popped up in the data at 3.5% and hopefully this continues so that HTC bounces up after showing a 5.6% decrease over the last year.

Apple Insider has presented the data in pie charts so you get an even better picture of what is going on by platform and hardware maker. They also give an interesting perspective on the data and group the platforms into integrated ones (Apple and RIM) compared to licensed ones (Windows Mobile and Google Android). Symbian is licensed too, but Nokia is the primary licensee so they are more of an integrated platform than a licened platform. It looks like the integrated platforms are doing better than the licensed platforms, which is not necessarily what the analysts all predicted.

The integrated platforms do give the hardware makers better control over a consistent user experience and upgradability of the platform, while also locking down more functions. It seems that the consumer cares more for the experience and UI than the ability to customize and tweak their device.