Latest UK Smartphone Market Share Trends

According to Comscore  data on UK Marketshare ,Google’s mobile platform Android witnessed strong growth over the last 6 month and claimed 14.9% share of the UK smartphone market in October 2010. Apple’s iPhones went up from 28.1% market share in May 2010 to 28.6% in October 2010. Nokia’s Symbian remains the leader in the UK with 32.2% smartphone market share, but showed a decline of 7.5 percentage points since May 2010.

Meanwhile according to new figures from retail watcher GfK. Almost one in every five smartphones now sold in the UK is Android.The increase in sales is due to a slew of new Android devices which have hit the market in recent months.More Android devices will become available in the UK over the coming weeks. Google's Nexus One, for instance, went on sale through Vodafone's stores and website today, a new Android phone from LG – the Optimus GT540 – is due out next month, while Samsung is due to add the Galaxy S to the current Galaxy Portal (i5700) which is already available in the UK.

Vodafone, meanwhile, started selling the HTC Legend at the start of April, adding it to a list of Android devices available in the UK which includes the HTC Hero and Xperia X10 from Sony Ericsson.

The 2.8in touchscreen device is the first Vodafone branded phone that uses Google's Android operating system and has been manufactured by Huawei, which until recently was best known in the mobile phone industry as the maker of 3G mobile broadband dongles. The Vodafone 845 runs on Éclair, the latest version of the Android platform and as well as being able to access thousands of applications it come pre-loaded with the Vodafone 360 service.

RIM has also taken numerous steps in recent months to fend off a fierce competitive challenge from the iPhone and a slew of Android-enabled devices. For instance, the company revamped support for third-party application developers, overhauled its BlackBerry operating system to make it more user friendly and introduced the BlackBerry Torch, the first BlackBerry model to include a touch screen and slide-out keyboard.

RIM also unveiled the Playbook, which will include Adobe Inc.'s (ADBE) Flash, and run on a highly-touted operating system made by QNX Software Systems. RIM acquired QNX earlier this year and followed that up with the purchase of The Astonishing Tribe, or TAT, this month. TAT is a Swedish software company best known for designing user interfaces for mobile devices.