According to a report by GFK Retail and Technology, a global consumer market research firm, Google’s Android OS has successfully managed to surpass Symbian as the most popular smartphone OS in Asia for the third quarter of 2010.

The survey considered on the 3rd quarter of 2010 and split the sample into North Asia and Southeast Asia. Northern Asia included Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea and Taiwan. Southeast Asia comprised of Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Mr Gerard Tan, Regional Account Director for Telecommunications, GfK Asia Pte Ltd said

Smartphones are the key drivers of the telecommunications industry at this moment. GfK’s retail audit findings are showing impressive, almost three-fold increase in value of the industry when we compare sales figures from the latest quarter to the same quarter* a year ago. He added that ‘While only 1.27 million smartphones were sold in the third quarter of last year, over 4.7 million units were sold in the same quarter this year, signifying a growth of nearly 270 percent’ One visible criticism of the survey was that India was not added to the survey sample. The criticism being that India is also a very important player in the smartphones market, considering its steady increase in demand.

One visible criticism of the survey was that India was not added to the survey sample. The criticism being that India is also a very important player in the smartphones market, considering its steady increase in demand.