QAim's Study Shows Android Usage Surges In The Nordics As Well

    QAim, a Finnish mobile analytics and Customer Experience Management (CEM) startup, has released a new study (announcement available in Finnish) on the share of different mobile operating systems (OS) among users of mobile services in the Nordic countries. QAim’s study shows strong increase in Android’s popularity among the active mobile services users, and the firm estimates that Android will become the most widely used mobile operating system among the Nordic mobile service users in the summer of 2011.

    QAim’s analysis is based on the company tracking the share of page views of different mobile operating systems in Nordic mobile services during 2010, between the end of January and mid-October. The study included over 58 million pageviews. The services QAim is tracking include sites like weather service Foreca, media companies Fonecta, Eniro, and MTV Media.

    QAim argues the study of realized traffic in mobile services helps to optimize the services and gives guindance on which platforms to focus further service investments. The company believes it can also be deducted from the results how much different mobile platforms encourage their users to actively use mobile services.

    According to QAim’s study Symbian was still the most widely used OS with over 45% share in mid-October, down just a couple of percentage points since January. iPhone iOS’ share has been decreasing also from just under 32% to under 28%. Android on the other hand has gone up 9 percentage points to 9.85% overall. Sony Ericsson has been another loser decreasing from 8% to 4%.

    Janne Aalto, QAim’s CEO, comments that Android surpassed Sony Ericsson (SE’s own OS, that is; remember now the company is mostly focused on Android) in page views at the end of May, and Nokia’s Series 20 – 40 in the beginning of July.

    Based on the last 14 weeks’ trend, provided the trend continues as is, QAim estimates that Android will surpass iOS in May 2011 and Symbian in August 2011 in terms of popularity among mobile services users.

    QAim notes the booming usage of mobile services (in the recorded period the page views grew 102%) has slowed down the fade of older operating systems, and in this autumn Symbian’s share has actually increased a bit with new devices entering the market. Nokia’s new devices may affect Symbian’s overall trend, It remains also to be seen how new table devices will affect iOS and Android shares.

    The findings follow Gartner’s announcement that Android would now be the second most popular mobile operating system after Symbian, accounting for 25% of all worldwide smartphones sold during the Q3 of this year. Furthermore, Gartner notes that all traditional manufacturers have lost their share this year, while the “unbranded” Asian manufacturers increased theirs the most.

    See also Gigaom’s illustrative infographic on How Android Is Taking Over.