Android will command a 39.5 percent smartphone market share worldwide in 2011, followed by Nokia Symbian at 21 percent. Windows Phone is expected to take Symbian's place by 2015.
Google's Android operating system will steal Nokia's title as top smartphone
operating system in 2011, grabbing a 39. 5 percent market share for the year,
according to market-researcher IDC.
Nokia's Symbian OS will drop to second place with a 21 percent share.
Research in Motion's Blackberry platform will
command
a 15 percent share, followed by Apple's iOS at 15.7 percent. Microsoft Windows
Mobile/Windows Phone 7 will end the year with 5.5 percent of the market.
Describing smartphone market growth in 2010 as "exceptional," IDC
analysts said smartphone vendors will ship more than 450 million smartphones in
2011 compared with the 303.4 million units shipped in 2010. That's nearly a 50
percent bump for the year, as more consumers and business users swap feature
phones for smartphones.
Equipped with full HTML Web browsers and 1-GHz processors-with an upward
trend toward 1-GHz dual-core processors-smartphones are essentially handheld
computers.
Apple's clever marketing and unquestioned hardware and software quality have
helped ship 100 million-plus iPhones worldwide. The platform should do even
better now that Verizon Wireless is selling the iPhone 4.
Meanwhile, the surge of Droid phones, Samsung's Galaxy S line and more than 100
other Android handsets propelled Google's platform past Apple iOS and RIM's
Blackberry platforms in 2010, according to
comScore.
Android is knocking on the door of the struggling Nokia, which is
placing its future bets on Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 platform.
IDC analyst Ramon Llamas said Android will take over the No. 1 smartphone
platform position this year, as carriers such as Verizon Wireless and AT&T
bolster their portfolios.
"This year will see a coronation party as these same vendors broaden
and deepen their portfolios to reach more customers, particularly first-time
smartphone users," Llamas wrote.
Verizon Wireless'
HTC Thunderbolt promises fast processing on the carrier's
4G LTE network, while AT&T's
Motorola Atrix 4G is another speedy phone awaiting its
carrier's 4G LTE build-out later this year.
Apple iOS and Android aren't the only hot smartphone platforms. Llamas said
Nokia's recent announcement to shift from Symbian to Windows Phone will have
significant implications for the smartphone market.
More than just halting Microsoft's hemorrhaging Windows Mobile market share,
the alliance will vault Windows Phone to become the No. 2 smartphone platform
behind Android by 2015.
IDC expects Windows Phone to effectively grab a 21 percent market share at
the expense of Symbian, trailing Android's 45 percent share through the midway
point of the decade. Of course, these figures are looking far enough into
the future to
incite
emphatic debate across the blogosphere.
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