Report: Android Devices Set To Outsell iPhones By 2012; Open Handsets To Succeed
Informa Telecoms & Media has released a report saying that Android smartphone sales will outstrip iPhone sales by 2012, based on the idea that “open” handsets will do better than proprietary systems. For the same reason Informa predicts that Symbian’s decline — its share of the smartphone market was 49 percent last year, down from 65 percent the year before — will reverse, with Symbian’s switch to open source helping it maintain its leadership over Android and MS for the next few years reports Silicon.com. “In 2008 almost 162 million smartphones were sold, according to Informa, surpassing laptop sales for the first time. The analyst forecasts smartphone penetration will reach 13.5 per cent of new handsets sold this year but is set to treble by 2013 – to well over a third (38 per cent) of mobile devices.”
Juniper is slightly less bullish on smartphones, predicting that smartphones will account for 23 percent of handsets sold in 2013, driven by the proliferation of online stores selling specialised applications that will make the gadgets more useful to individual people it says in a report. Juniper predicts that 300 million smartphones will be sold in 2013, and that the segment will weather the economic downturn better than other handset segments as people think “they will be getting more for their money by buying high-end devices”. Handset vendors will see the margins on handsets fall and will need to diversify into service provision with high-value content according to Juniper — something that most of them are already doing, led by Nokia.
Isuppli Alsop predicts the rise of the smartphone market, with sales rising by 6 to 11 percent this year, depending on the deals offered by carriers reports EfluxMedia.
Let's see, Google has how much experience in the OS space, online retail space, hardware/software integration and consumer electronics space?
I love OSS and regularly uses OSS tools and other software for programming work.
But consumers buying a phone do not give fiddler's fart about whether or not products are made from open source, closed source or bloody chili sauce.
What they do care about is that a good product does things that they want in an easy, professional and preferably efficient way. They care that the UI is highly discoverable, classy looking and does what they expect. And of course they care about pricing.
I would expect that the masses (and make no mistake it is the masses and their purchases that will crown a product or reduce it to an also ran) will largely ignore the gphone after an initial spike of curious early adopter purchases.
The gphone will most likely end up in a tussle with the Palm Pre over 2nd place. I would also expect it to place 3rd eventually since the Pre seems (at least it's demos) to be far slicker it's competitor.
RIM has a fairly entrenched corporate user base . i wouldn't think that that demographic would indulge in platform "bed hopping" to any great extent (although I must admit to being surprised at the numbers of people from this group adopting the iPhone as their new platform).
MS Win mobile 7 will impact the mobile smart phone world with a dull ineffectual thud as it arrives into a market already settling on other platforms. A collective shrug it's only acknowledgment. (Except for in MS dominated corporate IT groups who will likely show it to each other in glee).
The entire premise of the analysis is flawed. The analyst makes a wild assertion that BECAUSE Android is open source, it WILL BE more successful than iPhone. The flaws in this logic are apparent when one considers the relative market share of Windows and Linux.
Perhaps Android MIGHT beat iPhone some day. But please give some rational justification and back it up with evidence. At this point, there is no evidence at all to support this assertion — other than the religious belief that Open Source will always win.
I love Google's products but agree wholeheartedly with Sean's thoughts. It's not about open source vs. proprietary. It's about user experience. and iPhone is the clear leader right now.
On a side note, the Palm Pre does appear to be a pretty slick device but it will suffer from being on the Sprint Network (at least out the gate) and from a less developed app platform.
Informa Telecoms & Media clearly is missing something
The previous comments seem to be ignoring price. Android is free. Also Google doesn't have to become a hardware or consumer retail marketing expert. It's the phone's manufacturers, and the carriers selling the phones that will still be most invested. Google has simply provided them a great free tool that allows these groups to cheaply sell advanced features.
People weren't choosing phones for J2ME support, but they did choose them for the applications that J2ME provided. IM is a deal breaker for many people, etc.
I know people that want will make sure their next phone supports Shazam, or Pandora.
@mathiastck -
The iPhone app platform is free too. It only costs when you decide to purchase a "non-free" application from it. At some point the Android platform will need to be the same (a mixture of free and paid apps) or the whole economics of it break apart. What good does the Android platform do for the carrier (or manufacturer or developers) if revenue can't be driven from it…why would any of them bother?
The free/not free point is interesting only to handset manufacturer looking for an OS, so Android mostly hurts WinMo as I suspect Acer, HTC will gravitate to a superior and free OS.
Users mostly don't give a *** about OS, it is the experience, design and ecosystem that matters.
An open source phone that allows a community to ad to its applications will ultimately be great for the consumer. The grip Apple has on iPhone development squashes the group of potential developers.
@denver software developers – The fact that Apple opened up a very lucrative marketplace to bedroom developers motivates a great many of them to get on with developing for the platform. It in no way "squashes" developers.
Platforms with very limited potential for making money fill the major of developers with bored apathy.