Google’s Android Operating System could possibly overtake sales of Apple’s iPhone by 2012 predicted a report by research company Informa Telecoms and Media.
According Telefonica Europe, sales of the iPhone have now reached one million in the UK alone. The first Apple iPhones were launched in the US two years ago and the 3G iPhone was only out last summer.
On the other hand, the G1 SmartPhone was only launched six months ago last September and now accounts for 20% of T Mobile UK’s sales of handsets although we don’t know the actual sales figures.
However, Symbian is still the number one, at the moment at least. Just less than 50% of SmartPhones sold last year were Symbian based although this is significantly lower than the year before when 65% of phones were based on Symbian.
This drop is largely thought to be due to Nokia not performing well but also to others taking a share of the market including of course Android and OS X as well as BlackBerry, Linux and Windows Mobile according to the Informa report.
A research analyst at Informa said “the decision to move the Symbian platform to open source is crucial in maintaining its leadership over Android, Linux and Microsoft”.
There were nearly 162 million SmartPhones sold in 2008 and for the first time more SmartPhones were sold than laptops. Informa’s research also suggests that sales of SmartPhones will continue to maintain “robust growth” at a rate of around 35.3% every year.
This isn’t the same story for all handsets though, it is expected that total handset sales will drop by 10.1% during 2009 as a result of the global recession.
“However, its effect will not be felt equally across all segments. While demand in the mid tier will fall away during 2009, sales of new SmartPhones will grow over 30% to 211.2 million units, driven by innovative new devices and operator subsidies designed to promote mobile data consumption, so that by 2013 almost four in every ten handsets sold worldwide will be a SmartPhone. With impressive growth rates like this, the SmartPhone market has proved too attractive to companies in adjacent market segments, such as leading notebook vendor, Acer” said research Analyst Gavin Byrne from Informa.
