The global smartphone market will double in size by 2016 and Android will destroy all competition, including Apple. Apple will be the closest competitor, but it won’t be close. According to Ovum, which provides clients with independent and objective analysis to enable them to make better business and technology decisions, Apple will be 20.5% behind Android.
Ovum expects shipments of smartphones to be 653 million by 2016 with a compounded annual growth rate of 14.5%. Ovum principal analyst Adam Leach said,“The smartphone market will see significant growth over the next five years, once again outperforming the wider mobile phone market. We will see dramatic shifts in dominance for smartphone software platforms, with Android storming into the lead with 38% market share, compared to Apple iOS’ 17.5%, by 2016.”
Windows Phone will come in at 17.2% and BlackBerry will be 16.5%. Symbian will decline rapidly now that Nokia’s primary smartphone platform will be Windows. Leach still expects one other platform to achieve mainstream success, but is not certain if it will be Bada, WebOS, MeeGo, or a new entrant into the market place.
Is anyone surprised by this news? In just 2 years Android became the number 1 OS for smartphones. Most of that was accomplished in only 1 year. With so many manufacturers and carriers Android will be hard to beat.
I also find it interesting that Ovum predicts Windows to be ahead of BlackBerry. It is doubtful that this study took into consideration the RIM announcement that the Playbook, and possibly future QNX devices, will support Android apps. I am predicting that BlackBerry will be ahead of Windows by 2016.
To see the full press release hit the source link.
[via datamonitor]