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."

Comments

Android overlords

[Linsaran]

I for one welcome our new android overlords

Thank you editors

[klingens]

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.

Re:Thank you editors

[FooAtWFU]

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).

Re:Thank you editors

[Tridus]

That's what I came here to post. I can't believe the editors continue to post crap from Gartner. They're excellent at making very bad predictions, or in this case absolutely meaningless ones. They have absolutely no idea what's going to happen to this market in four years.

Re:Thank you editors

[NeutronCowboy]

But they're very useful in finding out what businesses will believe. It's amazing how much pull a Gartner article like this can have during a sales cycle.

Don't look at Gartner articles as truth, but as as an indicator of business beliefs. They're actually useful in that way.

Re:Thank you editors

[Xest]

"Hell, Google's Nexus One direct customer sales only survived from January to July 2010. It's a volatile market, and products come and go very quickly."

That was very much a one off experiment by a single vendor in direct sales, so it's hardly a great example of a trend in the mobile industry.

"Look at the Motorola Razr. Kids all thought it was the coolest thing ever. Plenty of them hit the market. They only survived from the end of 2004 to mid 2007."

Might I suggest the take a look at how the RAZR did? I'll give you a hint- it achieved over 3 times the number of handset sales the iPhone did in a it's first 3 year period. Hardly a good example of a failed phone, it was one of the most succesful phones in history, coming only behind Nokia's ultra cheap handsets like the 1100 which have been lapped up by countries like China and India, as well as African nations.

If you're going to criticise mobile phone marketplace predictions it's generally a good idea to have a clue about it first. Citing one of the most succesful mobile phones of all time as an example of something that didn't do as well as predicted because it only lasted 3 years is silly because it clearly was a phenomenal success.

There's a good basis to the idea that Android will continue to grow and that's because it's got the support of so many vendors, and certainly it faces issues, but right now it's growth is incredible. Sustainable? who knows, but it's a better bet as the next contender to the crown in the mobile phone industry compared to other mobile phone OS' who are pretty much stagnant or are even in decline. Perhaps the best thing Android has going for it though because by nature of it's relative openness it's a candidate to replace the next generation of phones lapped up by the poorer markets like India, Africa, and China, whilst things like iOS and RIM's Blackberry OS, possible even Windows Mobile have no real cheap hardware platforms- effectively right now other than perhaps MeeGo or whatever Nokia is calling it this week, Android is the only real contender to Symbian dominated markets without detriment to being a strong player in the high end smartphone market too.

i agree with the analysts

[shadowrat]

Android will become the most popular OS by 2014, or it will not.

Does this take into account...

[phillymjs]

...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.

Re:Does this take into account...

[demonlapin]

A short explanation of the US mobile market is in order.

There are four national networks, and they are owned by AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Sprint. Verizon and Sprint use CDMA rather than GSM, and they won't activate each other's devices. You want Verizon, you have to buy a Verizon phone; same for Sprint.

If you want to activate an unlocked phone on AT&T or T-Mobile, you can. However, each of them has different frequencies assigned for 3G service. As a result, you can only get EDGE data rates if your phone isn't designed for their network.

In other words, since you have to buy a phone that only works on one carrier, and since only T-Mobile offers a lower-cost plan if you bring your own phone, there is a strong incentive to buy a new phone every two years with the carrier subsidy - you won't get cheaper service if you forgo it.

Re:And I predict...

[Darkness404]

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.

Re:Is symbian even used?

[JanneM]

"Is Nokia's Symbian devices every actually used outside of Europe/Asia?"

Europe and Asia's population is around 4.6 billion people, or 70% of the worlds population. Anything used in "only" those areas of the world is pretty damn close to ubiquitous, whether it reaches every corner of the world or not.

Re:Deja vu?

[ScrewMaster]

Google will be (or already is?) the new Microsoft.

Just as Microsoft was the new IBM.

That always sounds like a reasonable comparison, but under Google's current leadership, and their current business focus, that probably won't ever be the case. Microsoft got where it is by committing a whole host of illegal, anti-competitive acts (still are, actually) and can be legitimately said to have retarded progress over the past thirty-odd years. Google isn't really doing anything of that nature, and if anything is pushing the state-of-the-art. Google's external operations are also very standards-based and, so far as I'm aware, Google hasn't pulled anything like what Microsoft did with the ISO approval process.

Google isn't charging an arm-and-a-leg to phone makers for Android, matter of fact, it isn't charging anything. It also offers a remarkable suite of online services ... also for free. Of course, there's a reason for that: the only thing Google really "sells" is ad space, and that will only make money for them as long as they can attract eyeballs. I look at Google's rather massive investment in R&D and outpouring of free cloud-based services as being very future-oriented: they know that they may not be able to subsist on ad revenue forever, and would like to have other options. Microsoft has been doing the same thing for the same reason for many years, but Microsoft generally fails at anything outside its core competency of operating systems and office suites. Likewise, Google isn't making much money, directly, from its online services (other than its bread-and-butter ad views) but in the meantime we get to play with some cool stuff and they get to sell some more advertising. Some of that nifty online stuff may stick, and eventually start making Google some serious money. Only time will tell.

But they're far from a monopoly, illegal or otherwise (as of now, anyway), and any comparison to Microsoft or IBM in terms of ethics or monopolism is really undeserved at this point. Not saying that will always be true: companies do change, but in this case I think we'll have to wait until Brin & Page retire. Hopefully their successors will be at least as good, business-ethics-wise (well, better than Gates' replacement, anyway, which wouldn't be too hard.)

1300% growth rate

[Colin Smith]

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.

 

Re:Is symbian even used?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, Nokia sells 4 out of every 10 smart phones. Outside North America (5% of the world population), Nokia phones are practically everywhere. It's worth noticing that while the Iphone is considered a nice phone (and even a game changer) everywhere and it sells quite well, it was a smash hit mostly in the US: In most places people already had fairly good smart phones, it just wasn't that big of a deal even if the touch UI was awesome.

As a comment on this Gartner guesswork: many people dismiss the work Nokia does in the developing countries but they probably shouldn't. China and India are already massive smart phone markets and they are going to be absolutely huge. Nokia is _very_ strong in these countries.

Apple may not lose market share with Android gains

[perpenso]

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.