Android: the little robot becomes a monster

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 08 February 2011 12:16

IT Industry - Market

The symbol for Android might be a cute little robot, but he's starting to get so big and powerful that mobile operators are looking for someone, other than Apple's IOS, to challenge him.

IDC has just released the Q4 2010 results of its Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, with senior research analyst Ramon Llamas, saying "Android continues to gain by leaps and bounds, helping to drive the smartphone market. It has become the cornerstone of multiple vendors' smartphone strategies, and has quickly become a challenger to market leader Symbian.

"Although Symbian has the backing of market leader Nokia, Android has multiple vendors, including HTC, LG Electronics, Motorola, Samsung and a growing list of companies deploying Android on their devices."

According to IDC, vendors shipped a total of 100.9 million smartphones during the fourth quarter of 2010 (4Q10), up 87.2 percent from the 53.9 million smartphones shipped during 4Q09.

UK based research firm Canalys has also reported its Q4 figures saying: "Shipments of Android-based smart phones reached 32.9 million, while devices running Nokia's Symbian platform trailed slightly at 31.0 million worldwide. But Nokia did retain its position as the leading global smartphone vendor, with a share of 28 percent." Apple accounted for 16.2 percent of global sales and had a 16.0 share of the overall market.

Canalys expects Android to grow at more than twice the rate of its major smartphone competitors in 2011, despite market concerns over platform fragmentation.

Meanwhile speculation is rife that Nokia's new CEO, Steven Elop, (who is ex Microsoft) is about to institute a purge of the company's top ranks and announce that the company will embrace Android and/or Windows 7.

According to the Financial Times, European mobile operators are not at all happy with the prospect, fearing that the burgeoning smartphone market is in danger of being reduced to a duopoly of Android and Apple.

It reports "Operators such as Vodafone, Telefónica and France Telecom are privately hoping that Mr Elop will use a long-awaited strategy presentation on Friday to say that Nokia's fledgling MeeGo smartphone operating system is capable of providing a mass market alternative to Android and Apple's iOS platform for the iPhone."

None of the operators would speak on the record but the FT cited other sources as saying that, if Nokia really wanted to throw its lot in with one of the other smartphone OSs it should back Windows 7 - which presently lags far behind Android and Apple - Canalys lumps it in with the 'other' 5.1 percent share - in order to increase competition in the market.