Microsoft Windows Mobile Lands US Census Deal

TechNewsWorld covers Microsoft's huge Windows Mobile deal with the U.S. Census Bureau for 500,000 handsets to be built by HTC. JupiterResearch analyst Michael Gartenberg joked, "This is a big win for Microsoft, though obviously a bigger win for whoever it was in sales that closed the deal. It certainly validates the Windows mobile platform as a viable alternative for large scale projects."

On the subject of Mobile OS market share, Lee Allen at TDG said, "Symbian will maintain leading share through 2009, but 2007 will see the beginning of Symbian's decline in share as the combined market penetration of Windows, Linux and native Java begin to erode developer and vendor support for Symbian."

According to TDG, "Symbian enjoyed a market share of 51 percent, followed by Linux at 23 percent and Microsoft at 17 percent" at the end of last year. TDG forecasts that at year-end 2010, "Symbian's market share of advanced mobile devices will decline to approximately 22 percent, behind both Windows at 29 percent and Linux at 26 percent."

Gartenberg at JupiterResearch said, "Obviously, Symbian would have preferred to see a device with its platform chosen for a project of this magnitude, but there's still a lot of life in that operating system. It goes to show that there is lot of competitive action in this space and there is no one dominant platform."

Gartenberg added, "This is not such a watershed moment for Microsoft, but another step in a process that's been years in the making to get the right devices and the right partnerships out there and demonstrate to the market that this is a viable platform for these types of large scale projects,. Typically what you do see in situations like this is that success breeds success."