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By 8 April 2011 | Categories: news

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Last month the International Data Corporation’s (IDC’s) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker predicted that the global smartphone market is expected to grow by 49.2% during 2011. The company also expects Windows Phone OS to cultivate its 5.5% share of the smartphone market in 2011 to 20.9% over the next four years, placing it second after Google’s Android which will take a 45.4% share of the market. 
 
Gartner has now echoed the IDC’s sentiments, forecasting that global smartphone sales will reach 468 million units this year, which is a 57.7% increase from 2010. The firm foresees Google’s Android becoming the most popular operating system (OS) worldwide, gobbling up over 49% of the smartphone market by 2012 (48.8% in 2015).
 
Apple’s iOS will be the second biggest smartphone platform around the world until 2014, and by 2015 it will account for 17.2% of the global smartphone market.  This while BlackBerry holding company Research In Motion’s (RIM’s) devices will beset 11.1% of the market.
 
Like the IDC, Gartner views Nokia and Microsoft’s newly formed partnership as having a significant impact on the Redmond-based company’s Windows Phone OS platform. It had previously predicted that Windows Phone will be relegated to sixth place behind even Intel and Nokia’s MeeGo, with Symbian and Android accounting for 59.8% of all mobile OS sales by 2014.
 
Now, because of the Redmond-Espoo union, it sees Symbian’s share dropping to a rather insignificant 0.1% by 2015 (IDC stated 0.2%), with Windows Phone OS taking 19.5% of the smartphone OS cake (IDC said 20.9%). Both research firms predict that Microsoft’s mobile OS will overtake Apple’s iOS and RIM’s BlackBerry OS by 2015, to become the second most utilised smartphone OS after Android.

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