Android to account for half of all smartphone sales by end 2012, says Gartner

Stuart Corner
Friday, 08 April 2011 17:04

IT Industry - Market

In the latest, and most bullish, of analyst forecasts predicting the dominance of Android, Gartner is forecasting Android to command nearly half of worldwide smartphone market by end of 2012.

 

This is a considerably more optimistic forecast than that from ABI Research last month: it tipped Android to gain 45 percent of the smartphone sales by end 2016.

According to Gartner "Worldwide smartphone sales will reach 468 million units in 2011, a 57.7 percent increase from 2010. By the end of 2011, Android will move to become the most popular operating system worldwide and will build on its strength to account for 49 percent of the smartphone market by 2012."

In market share terms, Gartner is tipping Microsoft as the other big winner, forecasting that its market share will grow from 4.2 percent in 2010 to 19.5 percent in 2015. Here it differs radically from ABI Research, which said last month: "Windows Phone 7, on the other hand, which shipped in two million handsets in Q4 2010, will have to find incredible success through its Nokia channel to take more than seven percent of the market by 2016."

Gartner says it has revised its Windows forecast upwards "solely by virtue of Microsoft's alliance with Nokia," but says that "Although this is an honourable performance it is considerably less than what Symbian had achieved in the past underlying the upward battle that Nokia has to face.

Gartner forecasts Symbian to be dead by 2015, with a more 0.1 percent market share from sales of 661,000 units, in contrast to its 37.6 percent market share and 112 million unit sales in 2010.

RIM is forecast to do well also, with is market share reducing from 16 to 11.1 percent but with triple the sales in a fast growing market. Apple iOS is expected to pretty much maintain a constant market share from 15.7 percent in 2010, rising to 19.4 percent in 2011 and then falling back to 17.2 percent in 2015.

These figures are broadly in line with ABI, although it was more optimistic for both RIM and iOS than Gartner. It had iOS at 19 percent in 2016 and RIM at 14 percent.

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