Symbian Praises IPhone, See Opportunity

By James Quintana Pearce - Tue 11 Sep 2007 07:52 AM PST

Jerry Panagrossi, vice president of US operations for Symbian, has spoken to GigaOM about Apple's entrance into the mobile operating system market and the rumored plans of Google to follow suit. He seems fairly confident that Symbian will be able to fend off these newcomers and gain marketshare in the US—although that won't be difficult considering its low base. There's an interesting bar chart showing the penetration of smartphone OS's in various regions around the world, and Symbian dominates in all of them except North America, where it has just a sliver of the market. The Nokia N95 uses Symbian, of course, and it's also inside the new Motorola Z8 slider. From the bar chart Microsoft and RIM have the largest shares, followed by Access and then Apple. Taking the assumption that a greater percentage of smartphones will be sold to consumers rather than business people its reasonable to see where Symbian might take marketshare. Panagrossi said that Apple had "raised the bar in terms of usability", and other handset makers were close behind...meaning more popular Symbian handsets.