Canalys reports the worldwide market for what the research firm labels smart mobile devices (PDAs & smartphones) grew by a whopping 82 percent during the first quarter of 2005 compared to the same period a year earlier.

As you would expect, PDA shipments dropped by 6 percent, while smartphone deliveries grew by an astounding 137 percent. In total, 10 million PDAs & smartphones shipped last quarter.

According to Canalys, the Symbian platform continued to dominate with 61.4 percent of the market, as manufacturers shipped three times as many Symbian devices year-over-year.

By comparison, Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform dropped to 18.3 percent from 23.1 percent of the market, but increased product shipments by 44 percent over first quarter 2004. The Palm OS fell even further, moving from 22 percent to 10.5 percent of the smart device market. And instead of upping product shipments the platform lowered them by 13 percent.

Even though Research In Motion—platform and device go hand in hand—landed in fourth place on Canalys's list at 7 percent, the number of BlackBerry handhelds sold actually doubled from 379,990 to 758,300.

Manufacturers
Nokia continued to carry the success of the Symbian OS on its shoulders with 82 percent of all devices built on that platform. Not such a good thing according to Canalys.

Analyst Rachel Lashford comments, "Symbian will enjoy the volume Nokia brings, but I expect it would also like to see the other licensees expanding their portfolios.”

The mobile phone giant correspondently accounted for 50 percent of all smart device shipments (5,394,900 units) during the first quarter of 2005.

Although Chris Jones, Canalys director & senior analyst, thinks the recent arrival of mini-laptop-like 9300 and 9500 communicators are important for the mobile phone giant's place in the market, it is what's coming up that should boost it and the Symbian platform's success in the enterprise.

"The keyboard-based models are important products in Nokia's push to become the preferred device supplier for enterprise mobility. But both were in development prior to the formation of Nokia's Enterprise Solutions Group, and we expect to see it bring many more business-class smart phones to market over the coming quarters," says Jones.

palmOne, a distant second behind Nokia, tallied 9.4 percent of worldwide smart device shipments—a mere 1 percent increase over the previous year. The mobile device pioneer’s success rests with the popularity of its Treo series of smartphones (up 17 percent) and not its PDAs (down 27 percent).

Treos were especially popular in the U.S. with 80 percent of shipments occurring in America. The company has a lot of work to do to become a major player in the EMEA & Asia/Pacific regions, however.

Behind palmOne, but catching up quickly, was RIM with its aforementioned 7 worldwide market share. Next up was Symbian licensee Fujitsu with 6.1 percent of the market and an increase in shipments of 81 percent year-over-year.

Fujitsu’s place may come as a surprise to those not familiar with the Asian marketplace. The majority of the company’s smartphones sell in Japan, as it is the dominant provider of FOMA phones for carrier giant NTT DoCoMo.

In what may come as the biggest shock of all, Hewlett-Packard finished in fifth place. Although the computer and printing giant increased shipments year-over-year by 5 percent (577,650 to 607,010), its market share dropped from 9.7 percent for first quarter 2004 to 5.6 percent for first quarter 2005.

The company's disappointing finish is most likely due to three factors: RIM and Fujitsu’s amazing growth, the majority of HP’s eggs still resting in the PDA basket and disappointing sales for its first smartphone, the iPAQ h6315.

Perhaps HP will due better in the coming quarters with the release of its next-generation smartphone, the iPAQ hw6500; purportedly the first of a major push in that arena.

The Future
For a long time now a number of pundits have predicted the smartphone market would eventually tighten, becoming a two-way race between Symbian and Microsoft and their licensees.

The latest such talk comes from two Gartner analysts Nick Jones and John Girard in an article in the Inquirer. Because, they assert, the upcoming Windows Mobile 2005 for Smartphones OS (codenamed Magneto) fixes all of the bugs and issues in previous editions of the platform, the competition will tighten between Symbian and Microsoft.

They go further, however.

Since it will then come down to marketing, the two analysts predict Microsoft will come out on top because it can do a better job of painting its products as ‘the’ choice for enterprises

The analysts don't think upstarts RIM or the J2ME platform will end being major factors in the end.