Sunday, April 3, 2011

Android will be on almost half of smartphones by 2016,

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According to figures released today by ABI
Research, Android will be on 45% of smartphones shipped in the year 2016, as it will take up most of the market share vacated by the
soon-to-be-defunct Symbian operating system.

Although Android will come to be the dominant
player in the smartphone market, this doesn't
mean that others will necessarily see a big cut in
their own market shares. In fact, ABI projects that Apple's iOS will see its market share rise from 16% in 2010 to 19% in
2016, while Research In Motion's BlackBerry OS
is expected to fall slightly from 16% in 2010 to
14% in 2016. Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 and Samsung's Bada will also be players in the 2016
smartphone market, as ABI projects those two
operating systems to take 10% and 7%,
respectively.

ABI vice president Kevin Burden says that
although RIM stands to lose a bit between now
and 2016, the company will carve a comfortable
niche for itself in the enterprise market, as
enterprise users will still need the security provided by RIM's network operations center. "RIM's slight loss of share doesn't mean falling
shipments," he says. "RIM has found its niche, but
the consumer market will grow faster than its
portion of it." Research firm Canalys reported earlier this year that Android had become the best-selling
smartphone OS in the world, as Android
smartphone shipments reached almost 33 million
worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2010.
According to Canalys' figures, this gave Android
a 32.5% market share in the fourth quarter, just ahead of the 30.6% market share captured by
runner-up Symbian. Additionally, Nielsen reported earlier this year that Android has a lot of the momentum heading
into 2011. Overall Nielsen said that 40.8% of U.S.
customers who reported buying a new
smartphone over the past six months purchased
Android-based phones. iPhones accounted for
26.9% of new devices purchased over the past six months by U.S. customers while BlackBerry
devices accounted for 19.2% of new devices
purchased over the last six months by U.S.
customers. Ever since its debut in the fall of 2007, Android
has appeared on numerous popular smartphones
for several carriers including Verizon's Motorola
Droid and Sprint's HTC Evo 4G. Earlier this year,
Google released a new version of Android that is
designed specifically for tablet computers instead of smartphones.

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