iPhone Is Taking Over? Please.

Rico Mossesgeld over at The Smart PDA points to a Roughly Drafted piece on how the iPhone is scaring the Symbian folks because in the Q3 results for North America, the iPhone kicked butt over everyone except for Blackberry. Daniel Dilger is quick to dismiss how Symbian presents the numbers in a worldwide fashion because they “make for more attractive numbers.”

In a sense, Dilger’s right. As far as single device sales go, I would say the iPhone is probably the top seller in the SmartPhone category in North America. Even BlackBerry offers a number of devices to make up their large slice of their market share, whereas Apple is still a one-trick pony.

However, this race is by no means over and Apple’s “victory” in Europe is by no means clear. Apple does have to work in a different regulatory and market environment there–one that is not friendly to phone locking in the same way North America is. Furthermore, the population is, on the whole, more educated about the difference between a “locked” phone and an “unlocked” phone.

Apple is clearly doing well in the places they are selling the iPhone, but they are only addressing a small fraction of the overall market. By locking their phones tighter than Fort Knox–amazing how tight those locks are when the manufacturer is getting a cut of the service revenues–they are actually creating their own golden handcuffs, preventing their expansion beyond their chosen markets.

The other manufacturers should be concerned at this overnight success, but the fact is, we don’t know yet know how well the iPhone will do worldwide. Anyone who claims to know what will happen at this point either has inside information or is talking out their tail pipe. Either way, it’s going to be interesting to watch the numbers when they come out.

Disclaimer: I work for Nokia, but my day job has nothing to do with phones. They most certainly don’t pay me to pontificate on matters related to mobile phones or the market. The preceding was my take.