Windows Mobile Boasts 90% Market Share……in Korea

February 8, 2009 | By tjlikes3G

While Windows Mobile may only currently have about 11% of the global market share when it comes to smartphones, it can brag to having roughly 90% of the market share in Korea.

As we all know, Samsung uses a multiple Operating System approach in regard to their devices in the global market. In Korea however, all of Samsung’s handsets are of the Windows Mobile variety, and LG Electronics plans to throw it’s hat into the ring, by bringing their first smartphone to Korea with a version of the “Incite”, which will also be running on Windows Mobile 6.1.

“Symbian OS is leading the smartphone OS market with a 49.8 percent global market share, followed by RIM (15.9 percent) and Mac OS X (12.9 percent) in the third quarter of 2008, according to Gartner Group, a U.S. research firm. However, there is no Symbian OS-based smartphone yet here in Korea.”

It looks like Korea may be saturated with more of our favorite OS than any other country in the world. It would certainly be nice if Koreans could just convince the rest of the world to adopt the most powerful OS on the planet, don’t you think?

Head here for the original article, then let us know what you are thinking in the comments.

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Tagged market share, windows mobile

wreiad

Ha ha this is hilarious! But still, I’m surprised to see an area where Symbian does not dominate (Besides U.S.).
aleis

korea is not good for just phones i see!
ZSX

As much of a fan of WinMo as I am, I don’t see how this is good for anyone. Even I appreciate the innovation that Blackberry, S60, Android, OS X and now WebOS provide because of the competition.
http://encoreppc.wordpress.com encore

they also known as DAPland, and they r genius becoz choosing the right one
http://www.lifestreamtheband.com ai4281

Korea is a unique market, for sure…

First of all, it’s a pretty small market. 50 million people in population. That’s slightly more than Canada’s population, but it doesn’t even compare to US population. In total numbers, is this 90% that meaningful?

Korea only supports CDMA. And because of some laws preventing foreign handset makers to sell their stuff (unless through a complicated deal with Korean carriers), there isn’t an abundance of difference types of handsets as in Europe or even in US. Therefore, Samsung and LG are pretty much the biggest players in the market. Both of those companies haven’t done an Android set yet, and they usually have Winmo or their own proprietary OS on their handsets.

And also, feature phones are amazing in Korea. They usually come equipped with DMB (so you can watch TV on your phone) and front-facing cameras for video calls. Smartphones aren’t that popular. This 90% market share looks amazing on paper, but it’s not that big…

Because of these reasons, I think it’s pretty reasonable that WinMo has 90% of the SMARTPHONE market share. But in a global scheme, this isn’t that meaningful…
Chris

The actualy prevention of non-US companies is that they wont develop phones with the proper systems for sale in Korea. Otherwise in major cities the phones will work but won’t have any data access because of law, that was actually repealled as of April 1, 2009, so at this point non-WIPI handsets can be sold here. The ‘complicated deals with local carries’ is a typical issue throughout the US as well. Most carries won’t spend money to market a phone that someone can get from their competition, so releases are highly political there as well.

Also, in Korea, it’s not CDMA as we think of it in the US it’s WCDMA which is a more advanced network than most US carries use. My nice Samsumg CDMA phone from the US only registeres on a network in Seoul & Busan it can’t even read the towers in the city where I live.

This also the reason why most non-PDA phones bought and sold in the US are Korean manufactured phones. I’ve actually not seen the plethora of smartphones in Korea that I am used to seeing in the US; however, I think it is important to note that the market share being so strongly WinMo is important in that many people who fawn over regular handsets want the neat concept phones that Korea puts out to be licensed for sale in the US and if Korea keeps going towards WinMo this will be the OS used as the line between smartphone & handphones merge further in the future.
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