Google Inc. (GOOG)’s Android operating
system will boost its share of the worldwide smartphone market
to about half in 2012, supplanting Nokia Oyj (NOK1V)’s Symbian as the
dominant software system, Gartner Inc. (IT) said.
Android will run on 49 percent of smartphones sold next
year, up from 39 percent this year and less than a quarter in
2010, Gartner said in a research note today. Symbian will shrink
to 5.2 percent of the market in 2012 from 38 percent last year.
Nokia’s Chief Executive Officer Stephen Elop has said that
the company will begin using Microsoft Corp. (MSFT)’s Windows Phone
software and will taper off development of Symbian products.
Android is available to a wide range of phone makers and has
been adapted for Web-browsing smartphones by Motorola Mobility
Holdings Inc., HTC Corp. and others, helping it gain wider
distribution.
“As vendors delivering Android-based devices continue to
fight for market share, price will decrease,” Roberta Cozza, a
Gartner analyst, said in the report. Android’s “greatest
opportunity in the longer term will be in the mid- to low-cost
smartphones, above all in emerging markets.”
Microsoft’s operating system will claim 11 percent of the
market in 2012, rising to 20 percent by 2015, Gartner said.
Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone operating system, with 19 percent of
the market in 2011, will gradually lose share, declining by half
a percentage point this year, and falling to 17 percent of the
market in 2015, Gartner said. Research In Motion Ltd. (RIM), which
makes the BlackBerry line of phones, will see its share decline
to 11 percent in 2015 from 13 percent this year.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Amy Thomson in New York at
athomson6@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Peter Elstrom at
pelstrom@bloomberg.net
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