According to Gartner group, Linux based smartphone sales went DOWN in 2009 (~8.1 million units) compared to 2008 (~10.6 million units). Meanwhile iPhone OS more than doubled the number of sold units, from ~11.4 to ~24.9 million, which was also the greatest growth in absolute sales numbers for any smartphone OS, Android OS enjoyed over a 10-fold increase from ~.64 to ~6.8 million units sold.

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1306513

The article is pretty ******ed not to include Android as a Linux smartphone.

The distinction between Android and GNU/Linux is interesting, but the article is misleading.

Regardless, pretty impressive growth rate for Android, and as it is a different OS, and brand, I would tend to agree with Gartner separating it out.

Uh... what exactly were the linux smart phones in 2008 again? Gartner is funny - you can trust their numbers to within about 20% +/-, depending on who greased them the best in a given month.

So in the table we can map Symbian to Nokia/S60 phones, RIM to blackberries, iPhone to iPown, MSWin to HTC, Android to (in '09 anyway) the G1, and WebOS to the Palm Pre. What was Linux again? In '09 I guess that's about 5 weeks of the n900 (not bad, outsold android for the whole year) but can you name any other "linux" phone?

http://www.linuxfordevices.com/c/a/L...Mobile-Phones/

This is a motley crew for sure, and about 80% of them are Android phones.

I suspect it is phones with an embedded OS based on the Linux kernel. Sort of like my Linux television. Although what we really need is someone with a Gartner subscription who can read the whole report instead of just the press release and report back.

I only know of one linux powered phone you can BUY, its whats in my hand.
So they sold 8Miillion n900's last year then

IIRC in the past Gartner didn't count Linux phones, on which you could not install applicaitons onto, as Linux phones.

1) What about OpenMoko based phones?
2) Does "hiden" GNU/Linux count too? (the ones you don't even know you are running Linux)

Gartner doesn't count N900 in the Linux category. It's inlucuded in "Other OSs".

Android doesn't belong in the Linux category because it's Java on top of the linux kernel. The point being the linux portion is not accessible to the user.

That's like saying my cable box that runs Linux counts.

Furthermore the Motorola RAZR phones ran Linux but were heavily locked down by carriers.

Google Chrome OS is a stripped down Linux distro but all these M$ fanboys were like oooh Chrome OS, it's so great. *rolls eyes*