Monday, Aug 19, 2013
Dubai: Analysts are divided over Telecommunications Regulatory Authority’s (TRA) report on the smartphone and mobile operating systems in the UAE which said that Accenture’s Symbian operating system is ranked first in the UAE with 38 per cent market share as of June 2013.
Even though Accenture’s Symbian operating system is ranked only sixth globally with less than one per cent market share, it has just over one per cent in the UAE.
According to Hamza Saleem, senior telecom analyst at research firm International Data Corporation (IDC), Symbian had a market share of just above one per cent in the UAE. Android had a market share of more than 33 per cent while BlackBerry had a share of more than 15 per cent and Apple iOS with more than three per cent.
But according to TRA’s findings, BlackBerry OS came in second with 23 per cent market share followed by Android with 21 per cent market share and Apple iOS with 16 per cent.
Saleem and Annette Zimmermann, Principal Analyst at Gartner Deutschland, said that It is very unlikely for Symbian to take the top spot and don’t know how TRA has come to a conclusion.
“Symbian is almost dead and will exit the market by end of this year,” Zimmermann said.
She said that Android is the fastest growing operating system globally with 79 per cent share as of second quarter of this year.
According to TRA’s finding, smartphones had a market share of 44 per cent but according to IDC, smartphones had a market share of more than 60 per cent in the UAE and feature phones had a market share of 39 per cent.
TRA said that out of the total smartphones, Samsung SIII had a market share of 2.6 per cent followed by iPhone 4S with 2.5 per cent, iPhone 4 with 2 per cent ahead of iPhone 5 and Blackberry Bold 9900 both with 1.9 per cent.
In terms of mobile manufactures, Nokia enjoys the largest market share with 56.4 per cent, followed by Samsung with 13.8 per cent, Blackberry with 10.7 per cent and Apple with 7.4 per cent.
Saleem said that Nokia 1280 and Nokia 101 do not have an operating system while Nokia X1 run on Series 30 operating system. E5 is Symbian operating system.
“With 73 per cent penetration, internet usage in the UAE is currently exceeding both Mena and worldwide averages which stand at 41 per cent and 51 per cent, respectively. The findings derived from the TRA’s latest piece of research shows how healthy the UAE mobile sector is when compared to our counterparts across the globe,” Mohammd Nasser Al Ganem, Director General of TRA, said in a statement.
The report showed that iTunes in the second quarter of 2013 had 4.1 billion visitors, a figure that represents 92 per cent of the total visits to application websites. iTunes dominance in this field was followed by Nokia’s OVI website with 134.7 million, Samsung apps website with 107.2 million visits and Blackberry App world with 86.5 million.
Facebook was rated by far as the most popular site with a total of 13.2 billion visits representing 87 per cent of the total visits to all social networking websites during the period. Visits to Twitter came second with 11 per cent of the total visits with 1.7 billion and LinkedIn with 282 million. Maktoob and MySpace have achieved 8 million and 5 million visits, respectively.
By Naushad K Cherrayil Staff Reporter
Gulf News 2013. All rights reserved.
