Top stories

A New Kind Of Heist: Six Apps For Free

Those crazy MacHeisters are at it again, and this time the deal is even harder to resist.
The first ever MacHeist Nano won’t cost you a penny. You can download, without charge, fully licensed copies of ShoveBox, WriteRoom, Twitterific, TinyGrab, and Hordes of Orcs. If 500,000 people take part (which I think is a pretty safe [...]

Getting More iPhone Home Screens – And Keeping Them

A couple of weeks back, I wrote Temporarily Get More iPhone Home Screens Via Cunning Bug Exploit, but had heard staying away from the iTunes Applications tab within my iPhone was probably a Very Good Idea. Reader Larry Pressnell noted that since the most recent iTunes update, his extra screens have been accessible in iTunes.
Since [...]

Cult of Mac Favorite: MobileStacks Is the Best Reason To Jailbreak. Period.

I really like Stacks on my Mac. Stacks makes it fast and easy to find files, folders and apps right from the Dock. It makes managing a Mac pretty slick with all sorts of little UI tricks. That’s why I recently gave MobileStack a go on my jailbroken iPhone.
I must say that it lives up to the [...]

Gallery: Behind the Scenes From Two Classic Apple TV Ads

Is this Steve Jobs driving a tank in a classic Apple TV spot from the late 1990s? That was the rumor at the time: Jobs was making cameos in Apple commercials.
Ken Segall, the TBWA ad man responsible for naming the iMac and Think Different, reveals the truth after the jump. He also shares some rare [...]

Apple Displaces Windows Mobile For Smartphone Market

9:02 am, December 4th, 2008, Ed Sutherland

More smartphones are using Apple’s OS X operating system than Windows Mobile, a researcher said Thursday. Apple’s software now has 12.9 percent of the global smartphone market, pushing Microsoft out of No. 3 behind RIM and handset giant Nokia.

OS X-based smartphones – fueled by Apple’s popular iPhone – saw a 327 percent year-over-year increase, rising from 3.4 percent of the market in the third quarter of 2007. The increase far outstripped the 11.5 percent annual increase in the overall smartphone market, according to Gartner.

By contrast, Microsoft’s marketshare fell 3 percent to 11.1 percent.

“For the first time, iPhone sales exceeded sales of Microsoft Windows Mobile devices worldwide and in North America,” the research firm announced.

Another first: Symbian-based handsets fell below 50 percent of world sales to 49.8 percent of marketshare.

In what Gartner called a year for the weakest recorded sales growth for handsets, leader Nokia lost 3.1 percent of its No. 1 spot as No. 2 RIM and No. 3 Apple posted strong growth.

“Nokia is feeling the pressure from increased competition in the consumer smartphone market,” Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza said in a statement.

Cozza said the large handset maker first avoided the growing demand for touchscreen interfaces and now won’t be able to ship its new N97 until the first half of 2009.

Affirming the prediction of a slowing handset market, Nokia Thursday said it expects a five percent drop in handsets sold in 2009.

Posted by Ed Sutherland in News, iPhone | Comment on this article

About the author

Ed Sutherland

Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.

Email the author | Read more posts by Ed Sutherland.

Related posts from Cult of Mac

4 comments

    What other smartphones use OS X?

    Calloway, on December 4th, 2008 at 7:27 pm

    “For the first time, iPhone sales exceeded sales of Microsoft Windows Mobile devices worldwide and in North America,”

    It means there are MORE iPhones in the wild than phones using windows mobile.

    Deocliciano Okssipin Vieira, on December 5th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    To Calloway’s point, uh… “fueled?”

    Shawn, on December 5th, 2008 at 7:51 pm

    Hahaha, now can we call Apple crapware and the evil empire, and Steve bloJobs the devil like they did when Windows dominated the PC market?

    ipod=evil
    iPhone=evil

    Think different….like everyone else

    iPhonefan, on December 26th, 2008 at 6:44 pm