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What is the most used operating system? with almost 200m sold, isn't Symbian up there?

Most would instantly say "best selling OS? Windows", and then go on to speculate about Mac, Linux, Solaris. But what about Symbian?

Word in from Japan this week says that in that country alone, there are now 30 million Symbian smartphones shipped. And, says the company, that's a small fraction of the worldwide installed base.

We'll know the exact figure at next month's 3GSM show (now called Mobile World Congress) when Symbian's financials are announced; officially, they can already claim at least the 170 odd million smartphones counted by September 2007.

At best, they could be a lot more, say those in the know:

"We're getting ready for the announcement of 200 million smartphones world-wide," a source inside the company confided. "That's a lot better than Windows, isn't it? that would be only about ten, surely!"

Ha ha. Well, ha ha, but also, let's look at how Windows is doing. According to Softpedia, the latest version of Windows, Vista kicked off in its first month with Microsoft proudly claiming 20 million sold (they didn't say to whom). And if you do the sums, it appears that by end July 2007, that figure had reached 60 million.

Not only is that rather less than Symbian can claim, but also, it's not obviously an upward curve.

As Marius Oiaga, Technology News Editor put it

The answer lies with something Kevin Turner, Microsoft Chief Operating Officer said on July 26 at the Financial Analyst Meeting 2007. "So let's talk about deployment. So this is a new number for you: 60 million units sold to date (emphasis added). So really if you do over the last six months since our consumer launch, 60 million units have been sold of Windows Vista into the marketplace. And you know by our math we eclipse the entire install base of Apple in the first five weeks that this product shipped", Turner revealed at the time. Wait, to date? But this means that in July 2007, Microsoft only sold a total of five million copies of Windows Vista worldwide. This is four time less than the 20 million Vista licenses Microsoft sold in the platform's first month on the market or the additional 20 million it served in March and April. Have customers stopped buying Vista?

Linux installations are virtually impossible to count. Devin Frazier sees the Linux personality, not as the hard-edged corporate shark which probably represents most serious users, but as an archetypal nerd (left).

If you count mobile phones, though, perhaps it fits better? There are lots of those with Linux on, and will be more!

The Symbian "personality" is hard to define; certainly it wouldn't match the smart-suited individual which represents Windows, as shown above by Frazier Perhaps more of a sulky teenager with stripey hair sticking up? We're open to suggestions - press the "contact us" button!

But perhaps the cartoon representing Windows needs updating. With someone perhaps a little older. Riding an electric wheelchair. With a zimmer frame on the back? and towing a fully-loaded corporate supplies van full of paper clips?