Smart phone love all about the OS

With smart phones, happiness comes down to the operating system, according to a new survey from IDC.

The survey, which took six months to complete, included data from more than 4,000 mobile phone and smart phone subscribers from China, Germany, India, the UK and the US. Results were broken down by country, carrier, platform and device.

A user's satisfaction with a phone's operating system is the main differentiating factor driving competition, especially when it comes to smart phones, the study concluded.

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Wi-fi access and GPS or location-based services are most important to users in the UK and US. A phone's storage capacity and its ability to provide music and photo quality are the highest priorities in China, Germany and India, the study found.

Palm remains the number one platform among US smart phone owners, according to IDC. Nokia, however, is less successful across the pond.

Randy Giusto, group vice president of mobility, computing and consumer markets for IDC, said: "Nokia is the number one phone manufacturer in the world and the number one brand for market share in all the other countries but not in the US. These survey results show that nothing has really changed, despite efforts to target the E-series to mobile professionals and the N-series multimedia phones."

Palm is not only the most favoured operating system for smart phones in the US, it's also the most favoured device brand. About 76 per cent of Palm owners said they would be "very likely to recommend" their smart phone to others, compared to about 75 per cent for Samsung, 69 per cent for Sony Ericsson, 67 per cent for RIM BlackBerry, 54 per cent for Motorola, and 54 per cent for Nokia, the study found.

While not all of the four operating systems were available in all the countries surveyed, Palm was the top ranked OS in the UK, while Windows Mobile was number one in China and Germany. Symbian followed a close second in both countries. (Windows Mobile also ranked first in India but there were not enough survey respondents who owned smart phones to do a fair comparison.)

Usage also differed by country. Germans surveyed, for example, did not increase the average monthly spending on services when they switched from a regular cell phone to a smart phone. In all the other countries, however, monthly average revenue per user for providers increased after trading up to a smart phone.

Candace Lombardi writes for CNET News.com