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While there is some debate about just how successful the iPhone has been in Europe since its launch last month, there can be no doubt about its awesome impact in the US…

According to Q3 figures from Canalys, Apple's pride and joy has now attained a quite frankly staggering 27 per cent share of the North American smartphone market.

This frightening take-up makes Apple's Mac OS X mobile operating system the second most popular around, just behind leader RIM and its all conquering Blackberry line. More significantly however, the figures show Apple is massacring Linux, Palm and Symbian and has even inched ahead of Microsoft's Windows Mobile which is in its sixth iteration.

Perhaps most worryingly for its rivals though, Mac OS X mobile is Apple's first stab at a mobile phone operating system and its handset is a) the most expensive on the market and b) (unlike any of its rivals) limited to just one provider - AT&T, heavily limiting its potential availability.

So what can we take from all of this? Ultimately, that design breeds desirability and that features alone will not sell a device. Like Apple's iPod line-up which still lacks an FM tuner, expandable storage, a removable battery, AVI playback and iTunes independent operation, the iPhone misses 3G, a camera flash and (if locked) MMS, video recording, games, free customisable ringtones and network freedom to name but a few.

So Palm, Linux, Symbian, Windows Mobile and even RIM - buck your ideas up because Android is also on its way and who knows what we'll see in Mac OS X mobile v2.0…?

Link:
Canalys Figures via RoughlyDrafted Magazine

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