There’s a shift underway in the mobile operating system (OS) market. According to analysts at Gartner, Symbian’s share of the global OS market decreased to 47.1% in the fourth quarter of 2008. That’s down from its 2007 fourth-quarter share of 62.3%. Pressure from new platforms entering the consumer space, the continued decline of Nokia’s smart-phone sales, and the weakness of the Japanese mobile device market have negatively affected Symbian’s share, the analysts said.

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Leading that pressure, RIM increased its year-on-year share of the global smart-phone OS market to 19.5% in the fourth quarter of 2008, up from 10.9% in 2007’s fourth quarter, for a yearly growth rate of 84.9%. Microsoft’s Windows Mobile came in third, retaining that position, increasing market share over the period by 0.5% to 12.4%. This increase mainly came from the popularity of Samsung’s Omnia device and HTC’s touchscreen products.

Meanwhile, the iPhone pushed Apple’s Mac OS X to fourth place. Its 4Q 2008 10.7% market share was an improvement over 4Q 2007’s 5.2% total and represented the largest year-on-year growth with 111.6%. Linux saw 19.4% growth over the year, leading to a Q4 2008 share of 8.4% partly fueled by the launch of T-Mobile’s and HTC’s G1 Android-powered handset. Gartner says that Android smart phones accounted for 20% of total Linux sales in the fourth quarter of 2009. Finally, Palm’s share of the OS market fell from 1.2% in 4Q 2007 to 0.9% in 4Q 2008. Yet Palm hopes that its new webOS mobile OS and Pre touchscreen phone, due from Sprint by the end of June, will help turn things around.

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