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Gartner Predicts Android Most Popular Mobile OS By 2014
mikesd81 writes "According to Gartner research firm, Google's Android smartphone operating system will in a single year have leapfrogged competitors like Apple's iPhone, Research in Motion's Blackberry and Microsoft Windows phones in global popularity, and will challenge Nokia to become the world's most popular mobile OS by 2014. Gartner says that the explosive growth of Android will give it 17.7% of world wide sales by the end of 2010. ... Analysts also say there are number of things that could derail Android's growth, including Oracle's lawsuit over Java patents."
I for one welcome our new android overlords
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
for putting the most important words of this "news" right at the beginning: "Gartner predicts". From that point onwards, everyone knows one can safely disregard anything that follows unless a good laugh is needed.
the year of linux mobile desktop!
Google will be (or already is?) the new Microsoft.
Just as Microsoft was the new IBM.
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
In internet time, predicting what the most popular mobile OS will be in 2014 is like predicting what kind of music our grandchildren will like.
But as long as we're making predictions, here's mine: in 2014, the most popular popular mobile OS will be whatever the folks at Apple start secretly working on some time next year, and that doesn't get hyped out of all possible hope of satisfying consumer expectations until some time in late 2013.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
Is Nokia's Symbian devices every actually used outside of Europe/Asia? Because I really haven't ever seen one for it being the "number one" smartphone platform. I've seen tons of Blackberries, lots of Android devices, multiple iPhones of every generation, a few Windows Mobile devices, even a few Palm Pre/Pixis but I don't think I've seen a single Nokia smartphone with the exception of the N900 which doesn't run Symbian. So where are these? Just hiding outside of the US?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Android will become the most popular OS by 2014, or it will not.
...that the carriers are beginning to resort to their old tricks on the new Android phones? Stuff like replacing Google search with Bing and not letting you change it back, loading phones up with unremovable crapware, locking down tethering, banning installation of non-Marketplace apps, etc.
Before anyone replies, "Well, just root the phone to get around that stuff! Duh!" let me remind you that geeks who are willing and able to do so are far, far outnumbered by normal people who just want to use their goddamn phone, not tinker with it.
I actually think that Android won't become super fragmented but will break into 3 main branches
A) The "dumbphone or device" branch, devices that barely support their current version of Android loaded on them. (things running 1.5 that aren't phones like the Nook would be an example of this)
B) The "Stables" branch, everyday devices running a simi-current Android release (things running 2.1 right now would be an example)
C) The "bleeding edge" branch, high powered devices either easily rooted or pre-rooted that run the newest Android available (devices like the Nexus One would fall into here)
So developers would probably use branch A to make basic applications, use branch B to make things like games and branch C to make tech demos.
Fragmentation will be less and less of an issue the more phones that get rooted and the slower Google releases OS updates.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Ah, the "choice is bad" argument. All of Android's competitors have to argue this because it's the feature of Android that they don't have and can't get. Good luck selling that to people who expect 15 different kinds of bottled water at their corner store.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Stuff like replacing Google search with Bing and not letting you change it back, loading phones up with unremovable crapware
How is that different from the IPhone or the other incumbents? I agree, I really hate these tactics, but I just don't see what's new about them.
Android has something like a 1300% growth rate. If we extrapolate that forever, we can see that Android is going to take over the entire universe in approximately 15 years.
Deleted
Poor Oracle, they file a silly greed based lawsuit that may or may not even be valid. How stupid are they going to feel in court when the Jury, whose never heard of Oracle, but all love Google (read: helps them find pr0n, food, everything...) stare dumbly at them and wonder why they're picking on their friends!
But seriously, I highly doubt this is going to set Android back much, if at all. Even with an injunction (and however much time it would take them to get, sometimes quick, sometimes not at all), if what I've read is accurate (who knows?), they shouldn't stand a chance. As for Android, the lawsuit's gonna bring more attention to it, hurrays for free advertising!
I actually think that Android won't become super fragmented but will break into 3 main branches
Don't forget D. Third-party ROMs like Cyanogenmod and others. They have a pretty substantial following (they're the real reason people root their phones in many cases.)
... they never gave me any grief whatsoever for using my Android phone any way I wanted to. For the past year or so (since I first got a G1 and flashed it with Cyanogenmod) I've been tethering my laptop to it and running Skype, and doing other things that AT&T wouldn't allow, for example, an iPhone user to do. I pay my T-Mobile bill quite happily each month because they're giving me what I want from my carrier.
Ultimately, so long as there are carriers like T-Mobile that will let me go buy an unlocked phone (like the N1) and pop in my SIM card, fragmentation will be less of an issue.
The problem, for carriers, is that people want advanced network-based services like the so-called "Google Experience", they want the ability to run any application they choose. Carriers that refuse to acknowledge this are nothing but a business opportunity for those that do. Right now, that's why I'm on T-Mobile
The cell phone market has changed forever now that they're not phones anymore but pocket-sized personal computers. The cellular outfits are rapidly being relegated to their proper role as telecommunications providers: fat wireless pipes, no more. They don't like that, but unfortunately in world where the terminal equipment is smarter than desktop PCs were only a few years ago, they're going to have a harder and harder time justifying such things as "airtime" and 15c per text message. And that's good: I don't expect my home broadband provider to nickel-and-dime me for using specific Internet applications and services, and ideally would rather my wireless provider didn't do anything similar. Yet, that's exactly what they're currently doing.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If they had "predicted" this 12 to 18 months ago it might be a different story.
needs to be qualified to read "most popular 'SMARTPHONE' operating system". globally, ordinary mobiles ("non smartphones") will still rule the roost in 4 years.
Well, sure. I thought that was implicitly stated, since by definition a non-smartphone isn't going to run Android.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
When the carriers have as much, or more to do with the selection than the consumer...
Why anyone ever bothers predicting technological domination three years out is beyond me. Will Android even exist then? Will there be another technology in its place? Three years is a long time in the software world.
After some online research into Gartner Group accuracy I haven't been able to find any analysis whatsoever. A couple years ago one of their analysts commented that they periodically review their accuracy and issue reports listing some of their hits and misses. Given the number of managers who take Gartner's word as gospel, that doesn't seem like enough. I'm surprised that this question hasn't come up more often.
http://xkcd.com/605/
I'm not new here, but I'm sad to see that cognitive arguments such as above are marked troll. Wish I had some mod points to fix this.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
The Wall Street Journal also had analysis; they said that Apple can afford to lose a chunk of market share (in a growing market) and instead should worry about the competition driving the price down. Here's the story (do the google-the-URL thing to get a good Referer: if it doesn't show the whole thing).
It is not a given that Apple will lose market share. Apple may not be the player that is displaced by Android. Android is more likely to displace all the in-house operating systems being used by the handset manufacturers. For example Nokia could announce that they have dropped Nokia OS and Symbian OS and will use Android for all upcoming handsets.
The situation is not unlike Linux and Microsoft. Despite Microsoft being widely perceived as the competitor to Linux, it was really Sun Microsystems and other traditional Unix vendors that were displaced. Similarly I expect it will largely be the traditional handset operating systems that will be displaced, not necessarily Apple.
Will be making bumper profits as having the largest market share has nothing to do with being profitable.
iPhone share on global smartphone market has hovered around 13-15% for some time now, and there's no signs of it actually getting higher - so, 10% or less can happen pretty soon.
Things are a little more complicated, looking only at smart phones is a little limiting. Apple's iOS is not merely a phone operating system. Note that the iPod touch is displacing the iPod Classic and iPod Nano, the later being somewhat downgraded into a touchscreen version of the iPod Shuffle. Also note that the iPad is displacing net books to some degree. Finally, return to the iPod touch again and notice that with a back facing camera and the FaceTime app you basically have video calling wherever you have wifi, both parties need to be using an iOS device but if a Skype type application is approved for the iPod touch that could change. Apple is not really in the phone business, rather the mobile device business. I doubt they care much if they sell an iPhone or an iPod touch or iPad.
Could Android be used on non-phone devices? Certainly. That would make things a little easier to compare iOS and Android.
As a developer on a few mobile platforms, I foresee that Android will be popular for carriers and manufacturers, because it's free. But for consumers, it will, by 2014, be no more useful than any previous handset OS: Your phone WILL be locked into the apps, settings and themes governed by the carrier, and the number of "stellar" apps will dwindle considerably. Unless the carriers subsidize development for their particular handset, there will be very little incentive for major developers to waste time on such a fragmented market.
Circa 1990 Gartner published numerical graphs showing exactly how OS/2 would become the predominant PC operating system within, IIRC, three or four years.
People will pay money for anyone claiming to make predictions, and the miracle is that no number of bad past predictions ever seems to affect the credibility of the fortunetellers.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
when Google starts putting out products which they must pay companies to use or else they would fail in the open market, only then does Google _begin_ to act like Microsoft. Windows CE is a prime example of this since Android is the topic. And know that Microsoft had to sign money losing marketing deals with netbook makers to get them to boost netbook hardware along with purchasing licenses for Windows XP. Steve Ballmer said that was a mistake after that program cost Microsoft millions of dollars but won it 2/3 of the netbook OS market. From what I've seen of Android, it is a very functional and usable platform.
And let's not forget when Microsoft also paid vendors to not show or talk about anything but Windows Mobile 6.5 in the year Android first hit the market. Even though many of these companies were going to have an Android phone on the market months before the lack luster Windows Mobile 6.5 phones. When Google starts pulling these kinds of marketing stunts, then and only then can you even start to consider them the "new Microsoft". IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
No mod points today - but I totally agree. Google has done something very clever which the other vendors have not - they have not tried to take Apple head on, but instead they've picked a bunch of different areas where the iPhone is weak and made Android strong in those areas. They are moving into heavily differentiating Android based on advanced features integrated with Google services (integrated voice recognition / control that is ubiquitous, for example). These are things that are *really*, *really* hard for competitors to reproduce. So you can't go into a store and look at an Android phone next to an iPhone and do a direct comparison - "this one has better graphics, this one has a nicer contacts list, this one has better facebook integration, ... " etc. You have to make a choice between a completely different paradigm. This means that despite the hype, Android is not really competing with iPhone directly, rather only in a secondary sense. Compare with WP7 where it seems that Microsoft is very much going down the line of out-Apple-ing Apple. There are some differentiators but mainly they seem like they plan to take on Apple where Apple is strong - super smooth UI, great gaming, controlled experience. I wish them luck but I strongly doubt anybody can out-Apple Apple. You don't fight an enemy on their home turf, you make them fight you where they are not comfortable.
It'll be an interesting 12 months, that's for sure.
As much as I like Cyanogenmod, as Android grows we will end up with more non-technical people using Android. This means that the percentage of people following community mods will shrink a lot despite more people using community mods. What this means for the modding community is actually very little, modding will always be around but for Android as a whole we'll see fewer phones running mods.
I actually disagree with the GP's android groups, what we will see is:
A: feature phones/devices. Android MP3 players, ebook readers, low end phones such as the HTC wildfire that will not see an upgrade in its lifetime. These things will be competing with OS's like Bada and Symbian.
B: Mid range devices. Things like the HTC Legend, LG Optimums, SE Xperia10. All the functions of a smart phone but cheaper hardware and slower updates.
C: High end devices. The flagship devices from each manufacturer, typically running the fastest hardware with the latest OS (or a version below). Devices like the Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Desire, Motrola Droid/Droid2.
Right now we have two minor problems, the first is the breakneck pace of Android development. This will slow down, it has to. The second are the carriers delaying updates. The HTC Desire's base 2.2 ROM has been available for a month, but few carriers have deployed it, this will change as demand gets greater and carriers want to vie for your Android dollars (at least in Europe, Asia and Australia where I can switch carriers easily).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I saw this report and blogged about it yesterday (shameless plus: click on the link in my sig to read it). Basically my opinion is that if Verizon gets the iPhone then this could kill Android.
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www.moneybythenumbers.com
Uh... the GP very clearly stated that "Verizon and Sprint use CDMA rather than GSM," and SIM cards fall under the GSM standard
Then please allow me to rephrase Seto89's comment:
Also an important difference from Europe - Verizon and Sprint don't use CSIM cards.
This is why you license your tech out to anyone that wants it instead of keeping it in house. You can have the lesser product but there is more of it out there so you win by default. Sure you make less, but you get more back in volume ( and you marginalize the competition )
A lesson you would have thought Apple would have learned when IBM did it to them in the 80s. I guess not.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
by definition a non-smartphone isn't going to run Android.
Smartphone, or smart MP3 player? Archos makes Android-powered MP3 players; the one hitch is they don't have Android Market.
Yep, I did. On mobile platforms iOS (particularly the iPod Touch) is huge and growing rapidly. It's an awesome gaming platform with major studios now investing heavily in big titles. It will be interesting to see if they do the same for WP7.
Apple makes 50% of the profits, Nokia makes 25%, RIM makes 15%, and all the rest divvy up the other 10%. All of Android combined makes 3%. Motorola has not made any money on Android at all, and will likely be out of the business in 2014.
So who is going to be making all those 2014 Android phones? Or will users just make their own on a breadboard by 2014?
Dear Slashdot Editors, Your summary is wrong. Gartner predicted that Android will be the second biggest in 2014, just a bit below Symbian, which will still be number 1. Here's a link to a much better article on the subject: http://www.gsmarena.com/smartphone_market_grew_55_percent_ios_declining_by_2014-news-1924.php
Gartner have a long history of predicting all sorts of things. Sadly their predictions are no more accurate than asking /dev/urandom. It's not that they are rubbish, it's that they try to predict the unpredictable. Gartner only exists for PHB types who take their guidance from anyone with a bigger budget than themselves, not for educated people who make their own predictions.
From 2004:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/02/25/gartner_analyst_explains_hp/
I actually believe Android being #1 is much more likely than Itanium ever was, but either way their track record sucks.
Even so, what does it mean? Apple has a long track record of making money when not being the #1 position. Only apple will have decent hardware margins. It will be like the PC industry, with razor thin margins in hardware.
And in 2003, they predicted that Windows Mobile would rule the mobile market. I see how accurate that is.
I think that you are wrong regarding the carrier's ceasing in delaying updates. In fact, the current trend is for the carriers to regress to how things were before the iPhone broke away from the traditional carrier controlled handsets. Take a look at how they are changing the UI on Android and how they are controlling the apps. Oh, you will see some flexibility, but unless something changes, they would all (every one of them) like to stuff that genie back into the bottle so they can go back to full control.
And here Google is actually helping them. Google does not mind the carriers screwing with the Android OS. And Google is supporting the idea of removing net neutrality regarding the wireless bandwidth. Google is certainly moving to support the carriers, at least for as long they the carriers don't interfere with Google's advertising business, which won't be for long once the carriers see how to get into it themselves.
Except thats only happening on one US carrier.
Does not constitute a pattern. US Telco's have always been more tyrannical then their European and Austral-Asian counterparts (or more precisely, we control them better).
What you forget in your blind Iphone praise and Google bashing is that carriers have never had to handle updates before. Apple didn't change a thing, in the past updates were always either A) user driven or B) manufacturer driven and it was RIM who first started doing OTA updates. Eventually, this is going to be sorted out, there are problems now because it's a new thing and it's needed because of localisation, I for one hate En_US (is not a language) on my phone, give me En_AU or En_UK not to mention number formatting differences (US xxx-xxx-xxxx, AU xxxxxxxxxx).
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Google bashing and blind iPhone praise? You are too much into the religion. I was simply commenting on the American wireless status where Google is not the "do no evil" company of old. And where in the world did I praise the iPhone?
As to the carriers and updates, they could have done updates, but that gets in the way of consumers buying new phones and restarting their 2 year contract commitments. They have had plenty of opportunities with several handsets to release phones that they could either update themselves or for another company (specifically Palm) to do a better job with the handset.
En_US is not a language? It's the language that kept most of the Europe relatively free for the past hundred years or so. If not for that En_US, you would be speaking Deutsch.
They do now :).
I have one myself, and for a while you could hack your way into having the Market available (it wasn't that hard a hack, either). A few months ago, though, they signed off on officially supporting it. I can't remember whether I actually ever updated to the new version, or if I'm still using the old version with the hacked Market. But either way, I have an Archos 5, and it connects to the Market and downloads stuff just fine.
In any case, though, it's clear your parent meant "by definition, a phone that is not smart, isn't". So sort of off-topic.
En_US is not a language? It's the language that kept most of the Europe relatively free for the past hundred years or so. If not for that En_US, you would be speaking Deutsch.
More importantly, it's the current lingua franca of the industrialized world, so why he would say "is not a language" is kinda arrogant and smacks of sour grapes. I would say that the next one would be Mandarin, but given that China is investing heavily in EN_US (last I read there are more people in China learning U.S. English than there are people in the U.S.) that's probably not going to change any time soon. The GP had best get used to that.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
No, it isn't. It is full of facts that some people cannot or will not accept, so they confuse those facts with opinion in order to justify refusing to accept those facts, even though they have in fact been proved in a court of Law on more than one occasion.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun