Android will overtake iPhone OS and Windows Mobile in two years

Gartner analysts consulted with their crystal ball and found that by 2012 the Android mobile platform would be the second most popular in the world. The full report of the company, containing forecasts for the development of the smartphone market, will take place towards the end of October, but Ken Dulaney from Gartner has already shared basic data with ComputerWorld journalists.

The mad increase in the popularity of androphons, according to analysts, will be due to many different factors. One of the key factors will be the support from Google in the form of a number of cloud functions and related applications.

Also, Android as a platform has advantages over other OSes. For example, in the case of Apple iPhone OS, the main advantage of Android is openness.

In addition, smartphone interfaces usually differ in two approaches: on the iPhone, everything is built around applications, and on Windows Mobile and Symbian devices, the main focus is on the tasks and functions of communication. Android, according to Dulani, skillfully combines both approaches. In particular, the Android interface allows users to run frequently used tasks without having to return to the main menu.
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Finally, although the first androphone appeared only a year ago and did not gain much popularity (yes, it also has serious hardware limitations), in the past few months there have been several new Android-based smartphones from a number of major manufacturers. Next year, says Dulani, about 40 more models of androphons will appear, and a new version of the system, code-named Donut, will be released.

All these factors, experts Gartner managed to write in mathematical expressions and get about this model of the mobile market in 2012.

Here are the predictions:

1. Symbian OS - 203 million devices, 39%
2. Android - 76 million devices, 14.5%
3. iPhone - 71.5 million devices, 13.7%
4. Windows Mobile - 66.8 million devices, 12.8%
5. BlackBerry - 65.25 million units, 12.5%
6. Linux - 28 million devices, 5.4%
7. Palm (webOS) - 11 million devices, 2.1%