Gartner issued its quarterly mobile phone market share report this week, noting that overall, sales were down in 2009 but saw growth in the fourth quarter of last year. The outlook is bright, as the research firm predicts sales to return to a low double-digit growth.

Symbian remains the worldwide leader, with 46.9 percent market share. The iPhone doubled its market share from 2008, growing to 14.4 percent, up from 8.2. Android moved from .5 percent to 3.9 percent in 2009 and BlackBerry saw a 3.3 increase, to land at just under 20 percent.

While the numbers are important, the implications and what this means for mobile developers like Quickoffice, are key. The landscape of operating systems and mobile device manufacturers has rapidly evolved and we expect to continue to see this shakeout in 2010. At Quickoffice, we made the commitment to move cross-platform back in 2008 and since, we’ve moved from predominately a Symbian-supported mobile application to developing apps for BlackBerry, iPhone and Android. In fact, we now have five iPhone apps in the Apple App Store, with the most recent being Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite.

Fresh on the heels of the multitude of phones, services, operating systems and applications announced at Mobile World Congress last week, I expect to see great things for each platform and device in 2010.