The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 4 (of 5) - source of phone/handheld market data

source of phone/handheld market data

hey, I'm trying to do some market research to see if it is worth my time to write a handheld/mobile phone app.

does anyone know of a good source of market data for handhelds? answering questions like:

- how many windows smartphones have been sold / are in use?
- how many symbian phones are in use?
- how many [insert mobile platform here] are in use?
- what age groups are buying these phones?

free data is great. reasonably priced reports (up to $1000?) are good. crazy expensive reports ($20,000) are bad.

thanks!

Friday, February 6, 2004

Write for Palm OS. Then expand to other platforms if your app sells well.

Kyralessa
Friday, February 6, 2004

GSM World has GSM statistics at http://www.gsmworld.com/news/statistics/index.shtml .

However, what is notable, is that they get their statistics from the EMC World Cellular database -- http://www.emc-database.com/ . I bet you could purchase the statistics you need from there.

Nate Silva
Friday, February 6, 2004

The prices on that site range from moderately expensive ($1500) to insanely expensive ($14,000+), but if you want the real data...

Nate Silva
Friday, February 6, 2004

There are a bunch of market research reports here in the $1000-$3000 range:

http://www.mindbranch.com/catalog/find.jsp;jsessionid=aFG2Bj0YnUp8?keywords=pda&action=quick&branch=

However, Palm OS seems to be the most popular platform for PDA phones, at least in the US. I'm drooling over the Treo 600 myself -- none of the Windows devices compare.

Robert Jacobson
Friday, February 6, 2004