Report: Smartphones To Be 29 Percent Of Total Market In 2014
Smartphone shipments will grow by 18.7 percent this year compared to last year, and will continue to grow at a compound annual rate of return of 19.5 percent through to 2014 when they will account for 29 percent of the market, according to predictions by Ovum. The factors driving this is the demand by consumers for third party apps and manufacturers concentrating on low and high-end phones, polarising the market.
Ovum predicts that Symbian will remain the market leader but lose marketshare, falling from 58 percent of the smartphone market in 2008 to 43 percent in 2014. Ovum classifies smartphones as those running Symbian OS, Windows Mobile, Android, OS X, BlackBerry OS, Palm (NSDQ: PALM) OS, Web OS and LiMo. Android is predicted to take second place, hitting 72 million units by 2014 and taking 18 percent of the smartphone market. Ovum thinks that people will mostly by smartphones based on the vendor managing their data and services on the device, such as Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) has started.
Is Ovum hypothesizing the percentages or extrapolating from actual 2008 smartphone results? And what is their 2008 starting point for shipments? Research by iSuppli reported 173.6 million shipments for 2008 with 11% projected growth for 2009. Informa Research predicts 30% growth from 162.5 million in 2008 to 211.2 million for 2009 smartphones. Ovum is claiming that Android will be 72 million units or 18% of the smartphone market in 2009, Ovum is stating that 2014 will be 400 million smartphones. At their 19.5% compound rate, Ovum is using only 165 million for 2008 smartphone shipments. Ovum's starting point is low. And Ovum's growth percentage is questionable without providing estimates of replacement cycles for mature and emerging markets.
I think the difference could be in how "smartphones" are defined. By defining smartphones as those running a few operating systems rather than the features of the handset Ovum's definition is more restrictive.