Why Zmags Does Not Focus on Symbian and Blackberry Devices for Mobile Content Distribution

Techcrunch recently reported that by looking at some recent reports from the total number of smartphones sold, it is evident that Symbian-based phones from vendors like Nokia and Sony-Ericsson have the highest market share by far. Worldwide, Symbian showed a market share of 44.3% in Q1 2010 followed by Research In Motion (Blackberry) and the iPhone.

At Zmags, we just launched our browser-based mobile viewer, and we spend a lot of time investigating how to come up with great reading experiences on smartphones. If you look at the above numbers, it’s tempting to conclude that Symbian and Blackberry devices should be the main target when publishing content for mobile devices. With so many versions of operating systems out there, we decided to make a clean cut and focus on the smartphones that mobile users actually use for browsing the web.

New generation of smartphones takes the lead on data traffic usage

If you look at where the actual data traffic on smartphones goes, the picture has almost been flipped over. Now it becomes clear that Android and iPhone OS are the big players in the US and Europe. Combining these two puts you close to 86% market-share in Western Europe and 81% in the US.

Symbian and Blackberry devices are great for checking emails or synchronizing calendars while on the move, but for browsing the web, the new generation of smartphones using iPhone or Android OS is clearly in the lead.

Read more about the market shares of smartphones and what to consider when bringing content to smartphones in this free strategic guide.