Canalys and Gartner have posted their Q3 market share numbers for open operating systems. The numbers differ slightly based on how some manufacturers were counted and whether the numbers represented actual sell-thru, or sell-in to the channel, but both provide an interesting look into how this market is evolving. The Android open mobile operating system is not included in the analysis.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Apple, who remember wasn’t even a phone manufacturer two years ago, has been blazing a trail past the 50+ Windows Mobile OEM device maker partners, RIM and its lineup of business and consumer devices, and is nestling in behind Symbian, who lost market share overall at the expense of the growth primarily from Apple and RIM. Nokia and Symbian could see a bump in Q4 with the phones they have shipped, but most were late arriving in market for holiday and may not see uptick until Q1 (N79, N85, 5800, E63, and E71 still isn’t shipping for North American operator, though hope is AT&T will launch in Q1 09). The Symbian Foundation is just gearing up, and it will be a while before we see Symbian open-sourced. HTC, Samsung and Sony Ericsson will all ship Android phones in 2009.

2009 data should include available applications for each platform as another indicator of what is helping these operating systems to gain adoption and traction in the market, as well as ecosystem revenue generation built around these platforms.

The below charts break out manufacturer and open mobile platform. Both the Canalys and Gartner tables are provided for comparison. To view the Canalys Q3 report, click here. To view the Gartner Q3 report, click here.

Worldwide: Preliminary Smartphone Sales to End Users byVendor, 3Q08 (Thousands of Units)

Note: Under the name HTC, Gartner counts only the company’s own-branded devices. The devices that HTC designs for mobile operators are shown separately under the operators’ names in these statistics.
Source: Gartner ( December 2008 )

Worldwide: Preliminary Smartphone Sales to End Users by Operating System, 3Q08 (Thousands of Units)

Note: The “Others” category includes sales of Sharp Sidekick devices based on the Danger platform.
Source: Gartner ( December 2008 )

Apple is continuing to refine its mobile-web connected service, Mobile Me, with a number of new updates posted today. What is more interesting is a European trademark filing from last week which could indicate that Apple plans to add a web-based version of iTunes for Music, Videos and Apps to its Mobile Me services for iPhone/iPod Touch users. With Nokia Music as part of OVI, and Amazon MP3 making inroads with Android, the potential move by Apple seems logical in building out its connected service offering.

The emerging trend from software companies focused on open mobile operating systems is to capture network value from the phone address book, with cloud offerings accessible from the PC web and mobile phone. The address book on the phone has traditionally been a place to input and access contacts and phone numbers for dialing while on the go. It wasn’t a destination, but a useful resource that once accessed, would allow a user to launch a communication channel. With the growth of social networks, it was realized that the mobile phone address book was perhaps more accurately described as a user’s real social network, and there was huge opportunity to monetize that if you could build out the largest mobile social graph. 

Windows Live gets credit for being one of the first in the market to integrate presence and link to photos from within the native address book application on a mobile phone, but Jaiku was the first to make popular. The Jaiku experience brought in presence and required a user to access from a separate, connected address book application on the phone.  Many people believe the Jaiku acquisition by Google was to get its own version of Twitter for a fraction of the cost, but I wouldn’t dismiss the power of the mobile network address book  and how Google could leverage as it looks to further enhance Android and its cloud services in v2 and v3. Even Jaiku founder, Jyri Engeström, may be signaling that is the case. 

ZYB, a company purchased by Vodafone in May of 2008 for approximately $50M USD, has been focused on building out a network address book accessible from the PC web and mobile phone client based on mapping contact relationships from a phone. 

With the iPhone, it’s amazing to look at how the Facebook and Yahoo OneConnect applications can actually replace the native address book on the phone, while leveraging the network they have built online for users. Instead of simply finding a phone number and address within the contact card, you can see status, recent photos, and access all native communication function directly from within these cloud-based address books, or mobile social networks. 

The Android operating system from Google is perhaps the most obvious signal from any of the giant software companies that they want a relationship with the consumer on the phone and online through cloud services on the PC web. The initial setup of the T-Mobile G1 requires a user to input a Google username and password to sync with Google contacts, calendar and gmail. Once that point is crossed, the customer relationship is with Google, not the operator, and what was commonly referred to in the 1990s with the rise of the internet vis-a-vis brick-and-mortar, as “disintermediation” is now being applied to the mobile industry with the rise of open operating systems. 

There is no doubt that Google, Microsoft, and Apple recognize the strategic importance of disintermediation value that connected services offer, particularly around  the mobile phone address book and PC online services that can be built around it, but in the traditional mobile phone industry, surprisingly there are only three companies who have publicly indicated they are serious about this market. The first is Vodafone with the acquisition of ZYB. The second is Nokia, with its OVI services. Two weeks ago at Nokia World, Niklas Savander, the day 2 keynote speaker said that Nokia had the opportunity to build the world’s largest social graph based on the volume of phones (about 450M annually) and average of 100 contacts per phone. The third is RIM, who is talking a seemingly opposite approach to help the operators reduce its exposure to disintermediation. 

As the Economist noted last week in an article on Nokia’s OVI strategy, the connected services market is finally taking off. Companies without a strategy will be left unable to differentiate their phones & networks, suffer the challenges of disintermediation, and surrender the billions in revenue that this market will create as software innovators like Dashwire power the new generation of connected consumer, social and business services across open mobile operating systems.

What is quickly becoming one of the most talked about phones of the year, the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 is starting to make itself available around the world.  The sleek touch-screen, slider keyboard device has a cool multimedia panel interface allowing users to interact with their content in exciting new ways.  This phone has picked up a ton of coverage, but one aspect about it that still seems to be flying under-the-radar is the great camera (3.2 MP, records 30 fps video, and takes some really great shots!).

Naturally, there was a strong mutual interest between our two teams to collaborate on delivering seamlessly connected, multimedia experiences for X1 users.

To do so, we optimized our Dashwire Mobile client for the Xperia and built out a custom panel interface as well using their developer kit.  We worked on supporting the high-resolution, wide-screen display both in portrait and landscape, and built out a multimedia panel that helps users more easily interact with their content and that of other Xperia users around the world.  The Dashwire panel and client are available for download at the Sony Ericsson Fun & Downloads page or via the on-device X1 panel downloader.

Click here to read the press release from Sony Ericsson.

Best Buy Mobile has a US link to pre-order here

Expansys has a UK link to order here

SAMSUNG OMNIA

CNET video review here

Engadget Mobile hands-on review available here

Brighthand review available here

SONY ERICSSON XPERIA X1

Paul at MoDaCo reviews the X1 – photos, videos, screenshots – here

Engadget Mobile takes it for a spin and has lots to say here

Video unboxing here

Detailed review available here

HTC TOUCH DIAMOND

Detailed, size comparisons, videos and lots of photos from PocketNow here

CNET video review here

PhoneArena review with good size comparisons here

Sprint Touch Diamond review by InfoSync here

HTC TOUCH PRO

Almost every mobile operator is picking this phone up for the holidays. Comes complete with HTC TouchFlo 3D user interface.

ZDNET’s Matt Miller covers the AT&T Fuze and Sprint Touch Pro here

HTC Touch HD

Engadget Mobile Review round up

LG INCITE

SAMSUNG SAGA

Short review available here

Dashwire for S60 will soon be available for S60 3rd Edition based devices!

NOKIA 6650

Available from AT&T Wireless in the US

Detailed review of T-Mobile version of the hardware from AllAboutSymbian available here

NOKIA E63

Couple of good comparison photos vs. E71 here

NOKIA E71

BoyGenius review here

Rafe review has tons of photos and comparison shot to E61 – here

Engadget Mobile review here

Couple of good comparison photos vs. E63 here

Couple of good keyboard comparison photos here

NOKIA N79

Detailed hands-on preview here

Full specifications here

NOKIA N85

Review with lots of photos here

Nokia Blog review here

NOKIA N96

Detailed review available from AllAboutSymbian here

PhoneArena has lots of great photos here

PDA Essentials, a UK-based magazine that provides in depth coverage of smartphones and GPS navigation, has recently included Dashwire in a review of solutions to back-up and restore your mobile phone. PDA Essentials has covered Dashwire over the last year (issue #70 and #75), and in a recent issue (#80), has compared ZYB, Mobyko, Dashwire and a couple others, and we’ve been fortunate to be named Editor’s Choice!  You can check out in issue #80. Thanks!

Dashwire was on hand for the Symbian Smartphone Show 2008 in London to announce Dashwire for S60. It was an event about the size of CTIA Fall in the US, but unlike other shows we have attended, this event provided comfortable seating areas to grab a few minutes of rest or work time. The message around Symbian as the industry leading open platform was resonating with attendees. There was lots of discussion about the announcement of Lee Williams, formerly of Nokia, taking on the role of running the Symbian Foundation, and most people we talked with felt it was positive based on his experience. 

Ford Davidson, Dashwire CEO, gave a presentation on Connected Services, market trends and how Dashwire’s licensable technology platform is opening the doors to new consumer, social and business opportunities for companies interested in getting into this rapidly growing market. Symbian will be posting a video of the presentation on their site in the near term.

On Monday, we hit up a great evening with S60 enthusiasts at the Nokia Flagship Store a few paces from Oxford Circus Tube station. There was a marketing blitz around Nokia Comes with Music – the storefront windows and retail displays were promoting the new initiative. Several Nokia Xpress Music 5800s were on hand, and we saw a couple of interesting demos around location based services. We grabbed a table and started demoing Dashwire for S60 – the included photos were captured on an N95 and uploaded instantly from inside the store using Dashwire’s service and sent out to Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.

We didn’t make any noise about this, but a few weeks ago we updated our Dashwire Mobile client (v381) to improve performance and fix some bugs for users with Windows Mobile 6.x phones:

• Support for hi-resolution contact pictures (HTC Diamond)
• UI enhancements, including multiple rows of photos and support for hi-res & wide screen phones
• Photo strip images cached on storage card by default (if available)
• Scattered bug fixes on random WM 6.1 phones (client popping in front, content upload failures, unable to connect, etc)

The update was built for Windows Mobile 6.x phones, though anybody with .NET CF 2.0 or higher can install it.

Check it out by visiting http://m.dashwire.com on your mobile phone web browser!

Finally, we’ve been a bit quiet lately because we’ve been cranking behind the scenes for our upcoming holiday launch.  Stay tuned!