Shipments of smartphones with Google-based operating systems surpassed the Symbian OS in the fourth quarter, giving Google 32.9 percent of the global market to Nokia's 30.6 percent, according to data from Canalys.
The Google numbers include the Android platform as well as smartphones running the Android-based Tapas and OMS platforms, which were developed in China. Shipments of Google-based smartphones jumped from 4.7 million in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 33.3 million in the last quarter, a 615 percent growth, Canalys said.
Shipments of Google-based smartphones got a boost from vendors like LG, Samsung, Acer, and HTC, Canalys said. HTC and Samsung together accounted for nearly 45 percent of Google-based handset shipments last quarter.
In October, Samsung said it would discontinue support for Symbian, effective December 31. One month later, Nokia said the Symbian smartphone platform will go back to being essentially an in-house Nokia operation as the Symbian Foundation winds down its governance role next April.
In the fourth quarter, Nokia sold 31 million Symbian-based devices, up from 23.9 million the year before. That represented a 30 percent growth year-over-year, though the Symbian share dropped from 44 percent in Q4 2009 to 30.6 percent last quarter. Canalys, however, said that Nokia maintained position as the top global smartphone vendor, with 28 percent of the market.
In the U.S., Research in Motion recaptured the top smartphone vendor spot from Apple last quarter, likely due to Apple's usual U.S. seasonal dip, Canalys said. RIM also benefited from the first full quarter of shipments for the BlackBerry Torch. HTC rounded out the top three, driven by its Android- and Windows Phone 7-based devices.
Overall, Android was the biggest smartphone OS in the U.S. during the last quarter, with 12.1 million shipments – nearly three times that of RIM. Microsoft dropped from 8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 to 5 percent last quarter because its Windows Phone 7 devices appeared too late in the quarter to take full advantage of the holiday season.
"The U.S. landscape will shift dramatically this coming year, as a result of the Verizon-Apple agreement," Canalys analyst Tim Shepherd said in a statement. "Verizon will move its focus away from the Droid range, but the overall market impact will mean less carrier-exclusive deals, while increasing the AT&T opportunity for Android vendors, such as HTC, Motorola and Samsung."
In a September report, analyst firm Gartner predicted that Symbian and Android will become the dominant mobile operating systems by 2014, with both RIM and Microsoft's Windows Phone OSes trailing off into relative irrelevance.