MOBILE: All the key stuff from the last 5 days

Symbian remains by far the most popular smartphone OS on the market. (for now)

New research from Gartner shows that for the fourth quarter of 2008 Symbian based smartphones accounted for 47.1 per cent of the sector’s total sales, with 17.9m handsets sold.

Blackberry-owning RIM was next at 19.5 per cent (7.4m units)
Microsoft Windows Mobile at 12.4 per cent (4.7m units)
Apple trailed with a 10.7 per cent market share (4.1m units)
Linux 8.4 per cent (3.2m units).

Of the Linux figure, Google Android phones (of which these is currently just one – the T-Mobile G1) accounted for 20 per cent – or 1.7 per cent of the total market.

Take Apple as a single device vendor and the numbers become very impressive for Apple – particularly considering that the numbers represent a 111.6 per cent year-on-year hike. Nokia, in contrast, suffered a 21.6 per cent annual drop. Personally I give Apple 2 to 3 years to take over......watch this space for the mini iphone and some other variations to give them more market share. And why not there OS is far superior, tech they produce is the best looking and the distribution channel tops all the competition. So if you want to beat Apple or stay in the market you need to be at least as good......but hell why not go for being better!

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Pop cap releases bookworm on the iphone (I think we will see more and more ports of popular casual games find there way to this platform)

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8 Million iphone downloads for digital chocolate (paid & free)

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GDC 09: iPhone games publisher Ngmoco head Neil Young today opened GDC with a keynote heralding the big changes the iphone & itouch have brought to the games market for developers and publishers.

He then outlined how the iPhone has changed the industry in four key areas: the market, games themselves, game making and publishing.

THE MARKET (ovierview)

800m App Store downloads of the 25,000 apps available, and how 165 apps are released released every day.

Even though the App Store is incredibly 'cluttered', the point to envy is how Apple has normalized digital distribution of game content, said Young.

He said: "Apple have trained 30m people to download and and install applications on their phone where ever they are. It is an amazing process we are witnessing."

And as games are largest part of the App Store, this is an "awesome opportunity" to generate revenue.

Full story

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UK telecoms company T-Mobile has stated that the average owner of the HTC Google Android phone the G1, which is exclusive to the network in the region, has downloaded 40 apps from the Android Market.

PocketGamer reports that the network’s CTO Cole Brodman added that there are around 2,300 games and applications currently available for download. He also stated that 80 per cent of G1 users surf the internet on their handset every day.

However, Brodman added that as the number of apps increases, the Android Market has become increasingly hard to navigate – particularly when compared to Apple’s App Store.

The exec went on to say that T-Mobile has big plans to expand its 3G network to accommodate the increased data usage encouraged by handsets such as the G1.