With rapid strides being taken in the mobile phone industry in the past few years, how will the different mobile phone platforms of today stack up against their rivals in the future?
According to a study released by Gartner today, Android could well be moving up the table to become the platform with the second highest market share, ahead of the iPhone, by 2012.
The Gartner forecast predicts the market leader Symbian to fall down by close to 10 percentage points by 2012 to reach a 39% market share. Android, which runs on close to 2% of smartphones today could see a huge surge in sales and attain a 14.5% market share in the same time period. The competition between the iPhone and Android could be pretty close with iPhone achieving a market share of 13.7% by 2012 while Windows Mobile and Blackberry would fill in the bottom two rows of the top five list with 12.8% and 12.5% market shares respectively.
So what exactly could be helping Android to rise to such high popularity in such a short time period? According to Ken Dulaney, a distinguished analyst at Gartner Research, there are three main reasons for this. Firstly, Dulaney attributes this to Android's backing by a company as big as Google. With a variety of cloud based applications developed for the Android, it could well become the smartphone platform of choice. The second factor that could help Android is the open environment it is being built upon which can easily help it score over a closed platform like iPhone that is developed in-house. The third factor that could come in Android's favor is the variety of handset manufacturers who will be launching Android handsets that could well propel the market share up. Dulaney predicts close to 40 models of Android devices to be shipped in 2010 alone.
All this however should not get Apple unduly worried. Unlike the market leader Symbian or the Android, iPhones are built with solid margins on sales which means that while Apple could be losing out in market share based on the volume of handsets shipped, the company could still prove to be a winner based on profit margins.
Will iPhone still hold the competitive edge in 2012 and do you see yourself still owning an iPhone till then? Please do let us know in the comments.
[via ComputerWorld]
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haha vy 2012.. its not even 2010 yet…. iPhone is BeSt but Att sucks…
2012 is the end of the world. LOL
Seriously, I'm thinking that by 2012 there will be another carrier in the U.S. besides ATT. Also remember that Apple plays the quality rather than quantity game. Android may be good and will surely kill blackberry, but iPhone will still be the leader at the end of the day.
Right now there are plenty more Microsoft users in the world, yet Apple is doing great and making progress. In a world with lots of Android users iPhone will do just as well, maybe even better.
And as far as cloud application and computing goes… Keep in mind that Apple is committed to building a HUGE data center in NC. What could that possibly be used for?
Apple may not be as big as Microsoft or Google, but they defiantly know how to make products that people like. No worries there.
That's my two cents.
Android was a good idea but is false advertisement…..Linux is sopposed to be open source but so far most apps for the phone you have to pay for,…..oki it's not just the apps only thing google has in common with Linux……nothing it's just another crappy os that hasn't deliverd…..fed up of the adverts or people saying it's open source no it ain't your restricted even when hacked…..the apple iPhone more going for it once jailbroken…..and no I'm not an apple fan boy…..I'm actually a big Linux user so you can imagine the android os is a big let down……if there is gnna a big rival to the iPhone it's gonna be the nokia n900
apple is definitely going to lose that battle due its proprietary approach towards iphone's operating system. jailbreaking etc. will never be more than editing a predetermined system within certain limits. it empowers you to do a lot of things, but it's all just second class solutions. how genious would an operating system be, that is completely open and developed further by people like saurik, geohot and the dev team + all the other talented iphone hackers. no annoying reverse engineering, no dirty code inserations… just a plain and open linux based system. that's the future. the only thing missing is a suitable device, but that is merely a question of time. and i think 2012 is not so far fetched. the day this becomes reality, it'll be the last day that i ever touched an apple product in my life.
This is magnificent…
The Term "Deus in Machina" really applies here. It means God in Machine. They get smaller and more powerful day by day!
aren't you people who keep your blood-lust going for any device comparable to iphone tired of holding your breath yet?
btw I bet my penis this Gartner, whatever the hell it is, is wrong. Android is a piece of shit.
More likely the Gartner study was haxxored by some linux phreakz who want to convince you that open-source it teh roxxor and wanted some fire to post on /. ! (lol – sorry)
Competition is great and can only make the market win. The fact that Android is competitive will only make Apple give us more Quality and better service. Game on!
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