Gartner has just released their forecast for the global mobile market reaching out to 2015, and as you might expect, things are looking good for Android. Much like ABI’s report, Gartner says Android is poised to take about half of the mobile smartphone market share by the end of 2012. A big part of the continued growth of Android will be thanks to lowered cost, apparently; it’s forecasts that by 2015, 67% of “open OS devices” will cost $300 or less. That’s a nice thought indeed, considering most smartphones cost $400 – $600 off contract right now.
Gartner is also just as optimistic for Windows Phone as IDC, claiming by the end of 2015, Microsoft will have nabbed 19.5% market share, versus 17.2% by iPhone and iOS, and 11.1% by RIM and BlackBerry. That is thanks in no small part Nokia switching to Windows Phone for everything eventually, and I imagine by 2015 that transformation will be more or less complete. Symbian is predictably set to decline to nearly nothing by 2015. webOS, sadly, is nowhere to be seen in these projections, lumped into the amorphous “Other Operating Systems” category.
Gunning for the bottom might be the way Android becomes ubiquitous, but that doesn’t make any guarantees for quality. Google is continually trying to keep fragmentation to a minimum, and even then there are no guarantees about how well Android will run on any given phone. A unified app market is nice and all, but more closed operating systems like iOS and BlackBerry are at least carefully tended by their respective manufacturers. Do you guys see Android improving along with its market share, or becoming more scattered?
[via Gartner]