Windows Phone Thoughts: Gartner Releases 2008 Smartphone Market Share Data

"In the fourth quarter of 2008, worldwide sales of smartphones to end users reached 38.1 million units, an increase of 3.7 per cent on the fourth quarter of 2007, according to Gartner, Inc. Global sales of smartphones for 2008 reached 139.3 million devices, up 13.9 per cent compared with 2007."

By vendor, HTC was ranked 4th selling 5.8 million units, about half of what the iPhone sold. For operating systems, Windows Mobile came in third with 16.5 million licenses. RIM's Blackberry was second with 23.1 million licenses. Symbian was first, but for some reason, I just don't count that as a serious smartphone platform since it is so fragmented and many users with a Nokia treat their phone like a feature phone, never installing an app or syncing with anything.