Android Finally Displacing Symbian in Asia

According to market research firm GfK Asia, smartphones continue to record exponential growth in Asia in the last 12 months with more than 4.7 million smartphone units worth more than USD 1,48 billion in total retail in the third quarter of this year. Now that smartphones have occupied nearly half of the portion of all handset sales.

"Smartphones are the main drivers of telecommunications industry at the moment. Findings from the GfK retail audit has shown impressive results, nearly three-fold increase in industrial value when we compare sales figures from last quarter with the results from the same quarter a year ago," said Gerard Tan, the Regional Account Director of Telecommunications, GfK Asia. "Even though only 1.27 million smartphones sold in the third quarter of last year, more than 4.7 million units sold in the same quarter this year, signaling the growth of almost 270 percent!"

With a rapid increase of the smartphone, war of the operating system (OS) is also heating up among major producers in Asia are scrambling to introduce their smartphones for the platform is more popular and user-friendly. Symbian, which had always been led since the second half of last year, faces stiff competition from the Android OS which has recorded strong growth in second and third quarter of 2010.

"Our Q3 report shows that Android has recently been caught up with Symbian as the most popular smartphone OS in Asia in the context of a whole, both in value and unit sales. However, it is interesting to note differences in trends OS when we see the findings in North Asia and Southeast Asia separately, "as was highlighted by Mr Tan.

In North Asia, the competition for the smartphone OS is probably the most intense in the OS market shares fluctuate dramatically in response to strategic and tactical initiatives of the major manufacturers. Android growth began to increase in early 2010 and managed to overtake the iPhone OS, the second most popular platform in the second quarter of this year.

In Southeast Asia, Symbian OS has been leading the smartphone OS market and continued to lead until now, although sales continued to decline gradually. Since the beginning of this year, Android, RIM and the iPhone OS have been enjoying the benefits of the smartphone segment obtained from the decrease in Symbian OS.

"With a variety of mobile operating systems are available in Asian markets today, manufacturers must look to the hardware to be able to continue to succeed in this market," as concluded Mr. Tan. Smartphone popularity has skyrocketed with one in every five handsets that are purchased in Asia in the last quarter (July-Sept 2010) is a smartphone.