Gartner: Android on nearly half all smartphones by end of 2012

Gartner forecasts that by the end of 2012 Google's Android will be powering about half of all smartphones sold, easily overpowering iOS and BlackBerry.

Market analysis firm Gartner is trying to look into the future of the turbulent smartphone market—and it sees things coming up very rosy for Google’s Android operating system. According to Gartner, by the end of 2012 Android will be powering nearly half of all smartphones sold worldwide (49.2 percent), while Apple’s iOS and Rim’s BlackBerry platforms will be distant runners-up with 18.9 and 12.6 percent of the smartphone market.

“As vendors delivering Android-based devices continue to fight for market share, price will decrease to further benefit consumers”, Gartner principal analyst Roberta Cozza wrote, in a statement. “Android’s position at the high end of the market will remain strong, but its greatest volume opportunity in the longer term will be in the mid- to low-cost smartphones, above all in emerging markets.”

Gartner’s forecasts for 2011 remain more modest, but show Android gaining rapidly in the marketplace, mostly at the expense of the now-moribund Symbian platform. By the end of this year, Gartner believes Android will account for 38.5 percent of the global smartphone market, with Apple’s iOS managing a 19.4 percent share, just ahead of Symbian with a 19.2 percent share. Gartner believes RIM will account for a 13.4 percent share of the market this year (down from 16 percent last year), with Microsoft coming in with a 5.6 percent share.

However, in 2012, Gartner believes smartphone sales will explode, jumping from a forecast volume of about 468 million units in 2011 to more than 630 million units in 2012. And Gartner believes Android will reap most of the benefits of that explosion as Symbian enters a sharp decline and Apple’s iOS mostly holds its own, proportionately. Gartner forecasts Microsoft will be able to jump to a 10.8 percent share by the end of 2012—making it the number-three platform worldwide—but Gartner doesn’t’ seem to have much faith in HP’s ability to put webOS back in the smartphone business: none of the company’s forecasts separate out forecasts for webOS at all.

It’s worth noting that share of the smartphone market isn’t the same thing as overall shares of an operating system across devices: Apple’s iOS also runs on the successful iPod touch and iPad, and Android runs on a growing variety of tablets and media devices. However, Gartner notes that consumers propensities towards media tablets and smartphones are linked.

“Consumers who already own an open OS communications device will be drawn to media tablets and more often than not, to media tablets that share the same OS as their smartphone,” said Gartner research VP Carolina Milanesi, in a statement. “This allows consumers to be able to share the same experience across devices as well as apps, settings, or game scores. At the same time, tablet users who don’t own a smartphone could be prompted to adopt one to be able to share the experience they have on their tablets.”

Gartner: Windows Phone 7 will overtake iOS by 2015

Gartner says that Windows Phone 7 will climb the ranks, and quickly - by 2015, it will be second only to Android.

Android’s getting a lot of attention for being forecast as becoming the OS for over half of all smartphones by 2012, but the real story in the report is that Gartner thinks Windows Windows Phone 7 will overtake iOS by 2015 and claim the number two spot.

Despite the skeptical reception the Nokia-Microsoft merger received, its long-term payoff will help drive Windows Phone 7 to a 19.5-percent market share come 2015. Speculation from the report also hints that Apple won’t be so concerned with holding market share, instead preferring to maintain its own profit margins.

At the moment, Windows Phone 7 has a 5.6-percent share, so Gartner believes that it will be able to roughly triple that within the next four years – which you’re right to be suspect about. Even Gartner didn’t believe that some months ago. The firm admits that it has “revised its forecast of Windows Phone’s market share upward, solely by virtue of Microsoft’s alliance with Nokia.” Its last forecast predicted that Windows Phone 7 would “be relegated to sixth place behind MeeGo…by 2014.”

While there are many things about these types of future valuations that you want to take with a grain of salt, the largest assumption to take a second look at in this one is that the Nokia-Microsoft partnership is destined for greatness. Or at least, that within the next four years it will be able to so smoothly align its production efforts that it will be able to leapfrog its competitors to the number two spot. There’s still plenty of concern over the deal; one analyst even told the Financial Times that “Nokia [is] unlikely to regain its previous level of dominance and…the outlook [is] fraught with risk and uncertainty.”

But at least some agree. The IDC recently forecast that Windows Phone 7 would also become the second most popular mobile OS in the world by 2015 (and boldly bested Gartner’s market sure prediction, saying it would claim 20.9 percent).

Maybe these guys know things we don’t, but Windows Phone 7 hasn’t exactly made the thunderous debut that Android did. Google’s mobile OS was the David to Apple’s Goliath, and its success story is inspiring, sure –- but not all that common. It’s not every day that something like this comes out of the woodwork to claim market dominance, and it really just seems like wishful thinking that Microsoft will be able to top Apple and RIM. There’s plenty of criticism about these forecasts, saying they are largely overestimated and revise predictions at the last minute – so the real test now is to keep an eye on what Gartner and IDC are saying about Windows Phone 7 come 2014, apparently.