Sony Ericsson toys with the dark side

In conjunction with 3GSM (aka GSM World Congress aka Mobile World Congress), Microsoft announced Sunday that it has finally won Sony Ericsson over to its camp. Of course, Sony Ericsson still retains a significant financial stake in Symbian OS as the owner of UIQ Technology.

This got me to wondering about all the side bets being made by the major cell phone vendors. Below are the platform choices by the top 2007 mobile phone vendors; X is a major bet and † is something that (for now) looks like a side or limited bet.

Vendor	Share	Symbian	Windows	Linux
Nokia	38%	X		†
Samsung	14%	X		†
Motorola	14%	†	†	X
Sony Ericsson	9%	X	†
LG	7%	†		†

The 110 current Symbian cellphones far exceeds that of the 39 Windows Mobile phones. Linux can be used for smartphones and feature phones, but at least among smartphones the market share is (roughly)

• 62% Symbian S60 (inferring from Nokia smartphone sales)
• 15% Symbian UIQ and MOAP
• 13% Windows
• 11% RIM
• 4% Linux (estimated from 2006, 2007 Canalys data)
• 3% iPhone
• 2% other including Palm, proprietary OS

In contrasting the willingness of European vendors to partner with the Evil Empire, it would seem that Sony Ericsson wants to sell smartphones in North America and Nokia doesn’t.

Of the side bets, rumors have it that Motorola will make more Symbian UIQ phones using its acquisition of Sendo. And of course all the efforts to use Linux as a mobile phone platform are still early, and all of the vendors could have major Linux commitments if the OVA or LiMo catches on.