Europe is growing quite fond of Google’s Android operating system, according to market research firm ComScore. Android devices now account for nearly a quarter of all the smartphones used in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK — a dramatic jump over the Google OS’s performance last year.

In July 2010, Android only accounted for 6% of the smartphones used in those five European markets, putting it dead last behind Symbian, Apple, Microsoft, and RIM. One year later, Android has zoomed past their rivals in Cupertino, and now is second only to Symbian in terms of market share.

Now, a full 22.3% of EU5 smartphones run on Android, a 16 point bump over last year. The most popular Android handsets are made by HTC, accounting for 34.6% of all devices, with Samsung hot on their heels at 31.7%.

Symbian’s hold on the lead is, at present, tenuous at best: while it powered more than half of the smartphones in the EU5 last year, usage has slipped to 37.8%, a drastic shift by any stretch. Given Android’s explosion in popularity, this could be Symbian’s last appearance in the top spot.

Meanwhile, Apple slips to third place with 20.3% of the market. They’ve benefitted from a very slight increase in market share over the last year, but that could all change soon. When Apple’s long-awaited iPhone 5 (or 4S, or whatever it ends up being called) launches, it’s likely to steal a bit of market share from all parties, perhaps securing them a second place finish next time around.

The entire landscape is in flux, and the chart below may not look anything like it does when ComScore’s next report pops up. Android will probably continue to pick up steam thanks to HTC and Samsung’s wide product lines, and Apple (as mentioned) will see a bump thanks to new hardware. Similarly, RIM’s forthcoming QNX BlackBerrys could help them pick up some steam, as could Microsoft’s WP7 Mango update.

Teasers are tricky. Companies have to find a way to get you excited about something without telling you what that something is, which can be difficult. It’s especially difficult to keep the secret product under wraps when the teaser file is named after the product. That said, Nokia’s Symbian Belle teaser is now more of an announcement than anything else, and we now know the update will be available August 24.

Posted to Facebook, the teaser says “It’s almost time to try something new,” with a countdown timer that will reach 00:00:00 on Wednesday. Problem: when it was originally posted, the animation file was called “Belle teaser,” discovered by Pocket-Lint. Shortly after, the file name was changed to “teaser.” So much for keeping things mysterious.

Well now that we know the “when” of the situation, we might as well get acquainted with the “what” of Symbian Belle. Various leaks lead us to believe that a drop-down notification system will be included in Belle, along with a multi-tasking tool called Task Switcher. A new app store may also be in-tow.

If you absolutely can’t wait to get a glimpse of Symbian Belle, this is a video leak of an N8 running the new OS:

It turns out the leak we blogged last month is true: Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo today officially introduced the Fujitsu LOOX F-07C as part of its summer line-up, and the device actually does dual-boot to Symbian and Windows 7 OS (not Windows Phone). Hardware-wise, the LOOX is pretty interesting, too.

Here are the main specs:

• Windows 7 Home Premium, 32-bit Japanese edition and Symbian double OS
• Microsoft Office Personal 2010
• slide-out QWERTY keyboard with trackball
• 4-inch LCD with 1,024×600 resolution
• 5MP CMOS camera
• 1GB memory
• 32GB eMMC
• 1.2GHz Intel Atom CPU
• 802.11b/g/n WiFi
• microSDHC slot (32GB max.)
• battery life in Windows 7 mode: 2 hours (after that, the device switches to Symbian mode automatically to save battery)
• size: 125mm×61mm×19.8mm, weight: 218g

Docomo will start distributing the LOOX F-07C in Japan this summer, but don’t expect the device to hit other markets anytime soon.

Take this with a grain of salt: Japanese tech blog Juggly is reporting [JP] that Fujitsu is working on a cell phone with both the Symbian and Windows 7 OS (not Windows Phone) on board. According to the article, the handset will be released by Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo as part of its summer line up.

Juggly even claims to know the name of the phone, LOOX F-07c, and also posts some specs:

• switch between Symbian / Windows 7 modes with the push of a button
• 32GB SSD
• 4 inch screen with 1,024×600 resolution
• Intel Atom CPU
• dimensions: 125mm×61mm×19.8mm
• optional USB/HDMI cradle

Again, the existence of the phone is not confirmed by Fujitsu or Docomo (which means the pic can be real or fake – my feeling is it’s real). As always, we will cover Docomo’s entire lineup when the company presents it.

Via Asiajin

It’s been a long time coming, but the four people who own Nokia N8s, C7s, and E7s can now play with the AR.Drone from the comfort of their phones using Parrot’s AR.Remote software for Symbian.

via Dailymobile

Well, it’s good to know that they’re trying to change all that, with Nokia senior manager Gunther Kottzieper announcing at the 2010 International Mobile Internet Conference in Beijing on Tuesday that the first of many incremental upgrades to Symbian OS coming in 2011 will arrive in Q1, and include more than 50 enhancements, including an updated user interface for the browser.

But no, they’re not stopping there! During the next two quarters, updates will bring “a new look and feel for the user interface, a more flexible home screen, an updateable HTML5 browser and an easier software update experience” according to a slide quoted by the IDG news service.

Nokia’s browser, now the weakest on the market since BlackBerry OS moved to webkit in BBOS6, is in dire need of an upgrade, so this is surely great news for all the Nokia users in the audience.

But wait! That’s not all the great news! Q2/Q3 2011 will also bring some serious hardware revisions to their phones, with 1GHz processors and extra video memory.

And then, looking further ahead, Q4 2011/Q1 2012 will bring dual-core handsets, and a “true zoom camera”, which combined with something like the N8′s already great camera, should mean a camera phone that may actually replace your point-n-shoot.

Looks like 2011 could be the year that things finally get interesting in Nokia-land again.

[via Symbian Freak]

Web analytics company StatCounter has a knack for pushing attention-grabbing press releases based on data collected by its research arm, StatCounter Global Stats. This time, the company claims BlackBerry has overtaken Apple’s iOS in terms of mobile Internet usage for the first time in the United States in November (see chart below).

Based on aggregate data that the company says it has collected on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month, StatCounter claims BlackBerry OS last month, at 34.3 percent, effectively trumped Apple’s iOS, which recorded 33 percent in November.

BlackBerry’s US lead is not replicated in terms of worldwide share, according to the same StatCounter data. Globally, Symbian OS leads with 31.9 percent followed by iOS (21.9 percent), BlackBerry OS (19.3 percent) and Android (11.6 percent).

Besides the evident conclusion that developers should look at other platforms rather than focusing solely on building apps for iOS devices, StatCounter adds that, according to its research, Apple’s iOS has dropped from 51.9 percent to 33 percent from November 2009 to November 2010.

Based on its data, Android is rapidly gaining and has almost tripled Internet usage market share from 8.2 percent to 23.8 percent in the same period.

StatCounter founder and CEO Aodhan Cullen says, provided current trends continue, BlackBerry and Android combined are on course to become twice the size of iOS with regards to mobile Internet usage in the next year.

Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7, meanwhile, hasn’t come up on the radar so far, but StatCounter says it’s keen on observing how it performs in 2011 and beyond.

For another analytics provider’s perspective, check out this post, based on Quantcast data: Android’s Mobile Web Consumption Share In The US Is Surging, iOS Share Dropping

Click the image for a more complete view:

Remember two years ago when Nokia open-sourced the Symbian mobile operating system? The thinking was that cell phone manufacturers who depended on the Symbian OS could help keep it going. But it was already too late. The iPhone’s iOS and Android started to take over. Even die-hard Symbian supporters abandoned ship. As the fanboy blogger Symbian Guru explained last summer when he decided to give up on Symbian:

I also can’t continue to support a mobile operating system platform that continually buries itself into oblivion by focusing on ‘openness’ while keeping a blind eye towards the obvious improvements that other open platforms have had for several iterations.

Now Symbian is delivering itself another blow—this time self-inflicted. The Symbian Foundation, which hosts all the open-source code, big fixes, and documentation for the OS, is shutting down its websites on December 17. The Symbian OS will still technically be open-source, it will just be impractical for many developers to look at it or improve it. According to a post on the Symbian Foundation’s developer blog, the open-source code and other information currently on its websites will be made “available in some form, most likely on a DVD or USB hard drive upon request to the Symbian Foundation. . . . A charge may be levied for media and shipping.”

In other words, the Symbian OS will be open only in name. What good is open-source code if it is not available online, where it can continue to evolve? For all practical purposes, it will become an artifact of the age of feature phones. Nokia will no doubt continue to develop the Symbian OS for its own purposes. But what a way to show disdain to the open-source community it professed to embrace only two years ago.

Of course, there is nothing stopping someone else from hosting all the code and documentation going forward on an independent site. Will any developers care enough to take on that task?

Well, the next stage of the transition was announced via their Wiki recently, and involves closing the virtual doors on all of the Symbian Foundation’s websites come December 17th.

That’s right, every single website — including the source code, kits, wiki, bug database, reference documentation, and Symbian Ideas hosted on them — will be removed from the web.

If you want access to any of the above-mentioned resources, you can contact the Symbian Foundation directly and ask for it on a physical medium (such as flash drive/USB hard drive) sometime after January 31st. Note that this may incur a shipping and handling fee.

To be explicit, the following sites are marked for the chopping block:

• www.symbian.org, www.symbian.org/cn, www.symbian.org/jp
• developer.symbian.org, developer.symbian.org/cn, developer.symbian.org/jp
• horizon.symbian.org
• ideas.symbian.org
• blog.symbian.org, blogcn.symbian.org, blogjp.symbian.org

With the Twitter feed and Facebook page also likely to take a paddlin’.

So, with Symbian development now almost solely in the hands of the community, what do you think the future will hold for the platform? Is this the freedom it’s always needed, or the final death throes before it goes the way of the Bluefin Tuna?

[via Engadget]

We can’t say we’re really surprised: according to market research company Gfk, smartphones are getting increasing popular in Asia, with Android now being the region’s most popular OS for this type of handsets. Cell phones with the Google software on board have reportedly enjoyed brisk sales in that region in the second and third quarters of 2010.

Gfk says that Android has dethroned Symbian in Asia in Q3 this year, both in terms of value and actual handset sales. Android seems to be especially going strong in Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea and Taiwan. In Southeast Asia (i.e. Indonesia or Malaysia), Symbian is still dominant – even though the OS is gradually losing ground to the iPhone, Blackberry and Android.

What’s also interesting is that one out of five handsets sold in Q3 in these regions was a smartphone. According to Gfk, smartphone sales between July and September this year amounted to 4.7 million units, which is a plus of 270% when compared to the same quarter last year.

Makers generated US$1.48 billion in revenue in that time frame with smartphones – almost 50% of their overall revenue. Expect these numbers to keep growing, as long as cell phone makers in the region keep on producing smartphones for the masses.

Considering the immense fragmentation that characterizes the mobile apps industry, it’s good to see decent research help us try and make sense of what’s going on in that particular part of the digital economy, one that is consistently growing in size and importance across the globe. Hence, I invite anyone with a vested interest in the mobile developer ecosystem to check out VisionMobile’s extensive research report (sponsored by Telefónica Developer Communities) on that very subject, because it’s easily one of the most profound I’ve read to date.

Dubbed Developer Economics 2010, the free research report delves into all aspects of mobile application development, across 400+ developers from around the world, segmented into eight major platforms: iOS (iPhone), Android, Symbian, BlackBerry, Java ME, Windows Phone, Flash/Flash Lite and mobile web (WAP/XHTML/CSS/Javascript).

The report, which is based on extensive research conducted by a team of three researchers, five interviewers, and eight mobile application developers between January and June 2010, provides insights into all the touchpoints of mobile app development, from platform selection to distribution and monetization.

Some of the key findings:

MARKET PENETRATION AND MINDSHARE

- Market penetration is hands down the most important reason for selecting a mobile platform to develop for, chosen by over 75% of respondents across each and every platform. Clearly, developers care more about addressable market and monetization potential than any single technical aspect of a platform.

- Based on its sample of 400 respondents, VisionMobile found that most developers work on multiple platforms: 2.8 platforms per developer on average, even. Among iPhone and Android developers, one in five releases apps in both the App Store and Android Market.

- In the last two years, a mindshare migration has taken place (see details here), with mobile developers moving away from “incumbent” platforms, namely Symbian, Java ME and Windows Phone. The large minority (20-25 percent) of Symbian respondents who sell their apps via iPhone and Android app stores reveals the brain-drain that is taking place towards these newer platforms.

- According to VisionMobile, the vast majority of Java ME respondents have lost faith in the “write once, run anywhere” vision. Moreover, anecdotal developer testimonials suggest that half of Windows Phone MVP developers (valued for their commitment to the platform) carry an iPhone, and would think twice before re-investing in Windows Phone.

- Android stands out as the platform most popular among mobile developers. Survey results suggest nearly 60 percent of all mobile developers recently developed on Android, assuming an equal number of respondents with experience across each of eight major platforms. Second in terms of developer mindshare is iOS (iPhone), outranking Symbian and Java ME, which were in pole position in 2008.

- Platform characteristics reveal a disconnect between developer mindshare and addressable market for each platform. For example, the Symbian OS is deployed in around 390 million handsets (Q2 2010), and claims over 6,000 apps, while Apple’s iPhone has seen 30x more applications while being deployed at just 60 million units over the same period.

- Evidently, most developers have a strong affinity towards the platform(s) they have invested time in; across all eight major mobile platforms surveyed, respondents felt that the best aspect of their platform was the large market penetration, even if the actual market penetration was relatively small.

(Click for a larger-size image)

MARKETING, SALES AND MONETIZATION

- Market channels that were mainstream a couple of years back take only a small chunk of the go-to-market pie for mobile apps today. Operator portals and ondevice preloading through OEM or operator deals is the primary channel to market for fewer than five percent of mobile developers surveyed. Research findings show that developers resort to either ‘native’ app stores, or to direct download via their own websites – in addition to the traditional model of bespoke app development.

- App stores have reduced the average time-to-shelf by two thirds: from 68 days across traditional channels, to 22 days via an application store. Moreover, app stores have reduced the average time-to-payment by more than half; from 82 days across traditional channels, to 36 days via an app store. On average, it takes 55 days to get paid via an operator channel, or a staggering 168 days when on-device pre-loading via a handset manufacturer.

- There is little use or availability of app stores outside the Apple and Android platforms. Only five percent of Java and just over 10 percent of Windows Phone respondents reported using an app store as a primary distribution channel.

- The key challenge reported by mobile developers is the lack of effective marketing channels to increase application exposure and discovery. Moreover, half of respondents are willing to pay for premium app store placement.

- The most important challenge in app certification is its cost; more than 30 percent of respondents who certify their apps report the high cost of the certification process as the number one challenge. The economics do not work for low-cost apps, but only for megaproductions.

- The gold seems over-hyped: only five percent of respondents reported very good revenues, above their expectations. Moreover, nearly 60 percent of iPhone respondents had not reached their revenue targets.

- Ad-funded models are only secondary revenue sources for developers employing app store and portal-based channels, lagging behind tried and tested pay-per-download models. Subscription models, meanwhile, mainly apply where the application is distributed via an operator or content aggregator portal; they have made limited inroads into app stores.

- Mobile developers view network operators as bit-pipes. Nearly 80 percent of respondents think that the role of network operators should be to deliver data access anywhere/anytime, while only 53 percent considered their role to be delivering voice calls.

TECHNOLOGICAL ASPECTS

- The learning curve varies greatly across mobile platforms. On average, the Symbian platform takes 15 months or more to learn, while for Android the average reported time is less than six months. Moreover, Symbian is much more difficult and time consuming to program than iOS (iPhone), Android or Java ME; benchmarks show that for developing nine different typical applications, a Symbian developer needs to write almost three times more code than an Android developer, and twice as much code as an iPhone developer.

- From a technical perspective, top pain points for mobile emulators and debuggers are slow speed and poor target device mirroring. Top pain points for development environments (IDEs) are the absence of an app porting framework, and poor emulator integration.

- In terms of debugging, ourbenchmarking shows that Android has the fastest debugging process, compared with iPhone, Symbian and Java ME. Debugging in Symbian takes up more than twice the time it takes on Android.

- Ability to build compelling UIs is still far from the reach of most mobile developers. Around 50 out of 100 Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows Phone per platform respondents are annoyed with the difficulty in creating great UIs.

- VisionMobile’s research indicates that the majority of developers – more than 80 percent of respondents – rely on community or unofficial forums for support during software development, while websites are used for support by only 40 percent of respondents.

- Access to unpublished or ‘hidden’ device APIs is a control point for platform vendors, but it is also what developers seem to be willing to pay for – in fact, more so than any other type of technical support. Hence, platform vendors could benefit from tiered SDK programs, where privileged SDKs are available to developers on a subscription plan.

- Operator network API programs have so far failed to appeal to developers. Only five percent of respondents thought that the role of network operators should be to expose network APIs. Yet more than half would pay for billing APIs, followed by messaging and location APIs.

- On average, 86 percent of respondents who use open source at work use it within development tools such as Eclipse. Android and iPhone developers are three times more likely to lead open source communities, compared to Symbian, revealing the contrasting pedigree of the developer communities. The single key drawback to open source reported by 60 percent of respondents was the confusion created by open source licenses.

The full report is available for free at DeveloperEconomics.com.

As if Nokia needed yet another wake-up call, self-declared ‘Nokia fanboy since 1999′ Ricky Cadden, aka Symbian Guru is so utterly fed up with the company and the products it releases that he’s quitting his blog (via Mobile Entertainment).

Cadden has purchased himself a Nexus One and seems well on his way to become an Android fanboy.

Anyone with the slightest interest in the mobile industry should read his goodbye post, which is a scathing analysis of why Nokia and Symbian are in the corner where the punches are being served.

Particularly people at Nokia and Symbian.

Here’s a teaser:

I can’t continue to support a manufacturer who puts out such craptastic ‘flagships’ as the N97, and who expects me to use services that even most of Nokia’s own employees don’t use.

I also can’t continue to support a mobile operating system platform that continually buries itself into oblivion by focusing on ‘openness’ while keeping a blind eye towards the obvious improvements that other open platforms have had for several iterations.

As on his decision to put Symbian-Guru on permanent hold:

And so, after 3 years and 8 months, Symbian-Guru.com is officially done. Thanks to Nokia’s consistently piss-poor hardware choices and Symbian’s lack of ability to even remotely compete in terms of features, abilities, and overall experience, I’ve lost my passion for both.

Ouch. Double ouch.

(More on MobileCrunch)

(Image courtesy of Barrett Hall / popofatticus on Flickr)

Mobile advertising and ad optimization company Smaato has released its March figures on mobile ad click-through rates around the world, and some of its findings are quite surprising.

According to Smaato, Symbian still reigns supreme in its global OS click-through rate index, outshining feature phones (non-smartphones with a proprietary operating system), Windows Phones and Apple iPhone and iPod touch devices, in that order. Android, at the number 2 spot in both January and February 2010, has dropped by around 50% and into fifth place. The only operating systems with lower CTR are those of Palm and RIM (Blackberry).

The index consists of the average click-through rates across all devices (set to 100).

Smaato’s metrics are based upon 36 mobile ad networks and over 4 billion ad requests served in the Smaato Network of more than 3,300 registered mobile publishers in March 2010. According to its report, Android has dropped fast in the past few months on a global level, although it still “outshines competition” in terms of click-through rates in South East Asia.

The biggest increased in mobile ad CTR actually come from feature phones and Windows Phones, which is upbeat news for the likes of Nokia and Microsoft.

Symbian’s lead has shortened in the CTR Index table yet remains the OS to beat with regards to CTR performance in mobile advertising. Feature phones have been making steady ground ever since since the first Smaato Metrics Report was released in December 2009, whereas Apple has remained consistent across February and March.

According to AdMob, smartphones accounted for 48 percent of its worldwide traffic last month, up from 35 percent in February 2009. Dominant still is iPhone OS, which has increased its share of smartphone requests on the AdMob network from 33 percent in February 2009 to 50 percent in February 2010. Android, however, is the fastest-growing these days.

Symbian is the big loser: while it accounted for 43% of AdMob’s smartphone requests in February 2009, it only reached a 18% share last month.

AdMob also says Mobile Internet devices experienced the strongest growth compared to feature phones and smartphones, increasing to account for 17 percent of traffic in its network in February 2010. The iPod touch is the top mobile Internet device and is said to be responsible for a vast majority of this traffic; other devices include the Sony PSP and Nintendo DSi.

For your reference: AdMob considers a smartphone to run an identifiable OS, a feature phone to be a mobile phone that does not fit into the smartphone category, and a mobile Internet device to be a handheld device that connects to the mobile Web but is not a phone.

Other highlights from the February 2010 AdMob Mobile Metrics Report (PDF):

- Symbian’s share of smartphone requests fell from 43 percent in February 2009 to 18 percent in February 2010.
- Android increased its share from two percent in February 2009 to 24 percent in February 2010.
- The top five Android devices worldwide, by traffic, were the Motorola Droid, HTC Dream, HTC Hero, HTC Magic, and the Motorola CLIQ.
- The Google Nexus One only generated one percent of total Android traffic in February 2010.
- Samsung, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and LG were the top manufacturers of feature phones.

(Via press release)

If I were a carrier, I’d probably be feeling rather nervous right now – and / or infuriated.

Skype for Symbian, which you can also download the app straight from the Skype website, will run on any Nokia smartphone using Symbian^1, the latest version of the Symbian platform (see list below).

It’s not the Skype wasn’t already available for Symbian, but its appearance in the Ovi Store will certainly increase awareness of its existence – as well as that of the Ovi Store, for that matter.

We recently reported that Nokia’s Ovi Store now serves more than 1 million downloads per day as of January 2010 (yesterday they said that number increased to 1.5 million per day or 22 downloads per second), and if the success of the Skype app for the iPhone is any indication, the addition of Skype will lift those numbers up significantly.

The app does everything you’d want a Skype app to do, as it includes support for making free calls to other Skype users over Wi-Fi and 3G, instant messaging, picture and video sharing – the whole nine yards.

This is the long list of phones that can now accommodate the installation of the Skype Mobile app: Nokia N97, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia X6, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia 5530 and the following non-touch devices: Nokia E72, Nokia E71, Nokia E90, Nokia E63, Nokia E66, Nokia E51, Nokia N96, Nokia N95, Nokia N95 8Gb, Nokia N85, Nokia N82, Nokia N81, Nokia N81 8 Gb, Nokia N79, Nokia N78, Nokia 6220 classic, Nokia 6210 Navigator and Nokia 5320.

Skype says it will even be updating the app soon to make it function on Symbian mobiles from other handset makers, including Sony Ericsson.

Bad news for carriers, good news for most everyone else.

(Press release)

http://download.skype.com/share/videos/player.swf

After so many years of hoping and wishing, developers can start getting excited about coding for the Symbian platform. Sure, it’s taken a while and some might be looking forward to Maemo 6 later this year far more than a newer version of Symbian, but opening up the source code to the world’s largest operating system is nothing to sneeze at. The Symbian operating system is aging and hasn’t changed dramatically over the last several years and this is exactly what the platform needs for a major facelift.

The Symbian Foundation has already set up a page full of resources for developers who want to build apps for the platform. There are videos, code examples, books, tutorials and forums to foster a strong development community. So if you’re a developer looking to jump into making mobile apps, or expanding on what you might have done for Android, iPhone OS or webOS, you may feel right at home with Symbian.

We’re sure it’s not going to take a lot of convincing if you’re familiar with the platform, but here are some fun facts that Symbian decided to put up:

1. As of February 2010, the number of cumulative shipments of Symbian devices equates to one for every person living in the United States (with some to spare).
2. As of February 2010, if every Symbian device shipped was laid end to end, the chain of phones would stretch around the circumference of the earth.
3. If all the Symbian devices shipped up to February 2010 were laid flat on an average UK Premiership football pitch, it would be filled to a depth of 3.5 metres.

Now you really can’t say that there won’t be much exposure for your apps!

[Symbian via PhoneScoop]

Some new December data from the mobile advertising company Smaato suggests that it’s actually Symbian that kills both the iPhone and Android. Now, I know what you’re thinking: that’s because Nokia, despite the buzz surrounding the sexier smartphone devices, remains the biggest mobile player in the world. But actually, the numbers are for the all-important click-through rates on the various platforms.

As you can see in the chart below, with the average CTR on ads for all mobile platforms set to 100, Symbian led the way by far with a 161 score. This was followed by the iPhone (and iPod touch) with 119. Android? They’re way down the list with a 65. Only Palm and BlackBerry fared worse.

So why is Symbian doing so well with click-through rates? Smaato suspects is may have to do with the high saturation of Nokia devices in emerging markets. But they also note that the CTR in the U.S. are higher for Symbian, though on a much smaller scale since Nokia isn’t nearly as popular here.

In terms of overall usage, Symbian makes of some 46.2% of the phones that Smaato tracks. RIM (BlackBerry) is in second place with 20.6%, but the iPhone is quickly catching up, with 17.8% after experiencing huge growth this year. But Smaato expects Android to the the big mover in 2010, likely going from just 3.5% now to over 10% by the end of the year.

Something else interesting from the report: Quattro Wireless tied Millennial Media as the top-performing mobile ad network in the U.S. That’s significant since Apple just acquired Quattro after Google stole AdMob away from them. Smaato didn’t specify AdMob data in its report.

[photo: flickr/jm3]