Google Android smacks down Windows Mobile in latest Gartner data

The good news for Google's Android operating system and devices continues and as the latest Gartner research data shows Android has now surpassed Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system and moved into fourth place with9.6 percent of market share. Symbian continues to dominate the worldwide smartphone market with 44.3 percent of market share with RIM in second at 19.4 and Apple's iPhone OS in third with 15.4. Microsoft moves down to fifth behind Android with 6.8 percent of market share.

Looking at the trends year-on-year we see that Nokia went down 4.5 percent, RIM went down 1.2 percent, Apple went up 4.9 percent, Android went up a whopping 8 percent, and Windows Mobile went down 3.4 percent.

Globally, the cellphone market grew 17 percent compared to last year with a whopping 49 percent jump in smartphone sales from January through March of 2010. It seems that Android is generating most of the current excitement with people waiting for the new iPhone and news from RIM with BlackBerry OS 6 coming later in 2010. According to Carolina Milanesi, research VP at Garnet, "Smartphone sales to end users saw their strongest year-on-year increase since 2006." That is excellent news for those of us who follow the smartphone space and honestly I think it is taking even longer than I thought it would for mobile to become dominant.

The Gartner data also shows hardware companies, but I am surprised there is no category for HTC who seems to be doing extremely well with the Google Android platform. There is an Others category with 19.2 percent and I wonder how much of this is made up of HTC.