Microsoft spent nearly a decade battling with Palm for PDA supremacy and then quietly snuck up on Nokia with a combination of touch-sceen phones which later fell out of favor to Nokia-like non-touch phones. Then, the iPhone emerged in the summer of 2007 and messed up the whole playing field. Fast forward to late 2009 and while Nokia still owns the biggest chunk of the phone market, that share is dropping. And, it is not dropping because of Windows Mobile phones which have pretty much disappeared from view from the casual consumer's point of view. The BlackBerry always competed well against Windows Mobile and seems to continue on its successful path despite design glitches like the original Storm. In the meantime, Google's Android didn't make much of a dent in the marketplace when the T-Mobile G1 was introduced a year ago. However, it seems to be gaining some traction now and the New York Times' Saul Hansell notes...

Big Cellphone Makers Shifting to Android System

I seriously doubt if Android based phones will do much damage to the iPhone's marketshare. However, in a marketplace where there is a bit of a zero-sum gain (if someone wins, someone else has to lose), it looks like if Android starts winning, the losers will be Microsoft Windows Mobile and Nokia S60 phones.

The upcoming holiday buying season's final numbers will probably provide us a clear picture of winners and losers when we see them tallied up and analyzed early in 2010.