Research firm Canalys reports that the trend from traditional handhelds (lacking cellular-wireless capabilities) to converged devices (smartphones and cellular-enabled handhelds) strongly continues with shipments of the latter rising 73-percent year-over-year while handhelds slid 33-percent. Overall, the smart mobile device market grew at 55-percent with Nokia leading the charge with shipments of over 9 million Symbian-powered devices.
Among the top five, Motorola finished second, thanks to more than a million Linux-based smartphones shipped in China and a strong start for the Windows Mobile Motorola Q. RIM, Sharp (with over 3700-percent year-over-year growth in shipments!) and Palm top out the top 5.
Shipments in the the traditional handheld market shrank to 1.4 million (compared to 2.2 million in Q2 2005). Palm continues to lead this segment (actually growing its share by 4-percent) from HP, Dell and Mio Technology.
On the OS side, Symbian continues to lead with a 67-percent share, followed by Microsoft at 15-percent and RIM at 6-percent.