Nokia lifts Symbian to Microsoft-trouncing heights

Nokia has kept its position as smart phone top dog, beating rivals such as RIM and palmOne to deliver a record-breaking quarter.

Research from analyst firm Canalys found that Nokia shipped 5.4 million smart phones across the globe in the last quarter - more than ever before - partly due to its new enterprise push, which has seen it bringing out qwerty keyboard-equipped phones.

The stellar first quarter saw Nokia notching up 223 per cent year-on-year growth. It is now the name on half of all smart phone devices sold worldwide.

Closest rival palmOne, which shipped around a million devices, saw year-on-year growth of just one per cent, however. According to Canalys, without the sales of its Treo handset, palmOne's shipments would have fallen by 27 per cent year-on-year.

Nokia's showing in the popularity stakes has also benefited software maker Symbian, whose OS ships on Nokia Series 60 phones. Symbian now holds a 61 per cent market share in the smart phone space. Microsoft takes second place with just over 18 per cent.

However, according to Canalys analyst Rachel Lashford, Nokia's popularity could harm Symbian as well as help it.

"Their focus remains on producing lower-specification, lower-cost 3G and 2G imaging phones for the mass market. Some enterprise customers may feel uncomfortable about adopting a platform so dominated by one vendor. The recent arrival of the Series 60 based Nokia 3230 heralds the company's first steps in pushing the OS down into the mid-market, which, if successful, is likely to significantly increase not only Symbian's volume, but also Nokia's share of it," she said in a statement.

Fourth-place smart phone vendor Fujitsu also licenses Symbian technology for some of its handsets, notably 3G FOMA models for Japanese operator NTT DoCoMo.