Gartner: Android to grab half of smartphone market by 2013

Thanks a billion

We've had mostly US-centric smartphone market research to contend with recently, so it's nice to have a global perspective from Gartner.

As we extrapolated when covering the US figures, Gartner reckons Android is set to account for just under half - 49.2 percent - of the total global smartphone market, and that this will happen by the end of 2012. However Gartner believes its market share will stabilise at around 49 percent.

While Apple looks set to account for a quarter of the US smartphone market for the foreseeable future, it only had 15.7 percent of the global market last year. Gartner expects that to increase a fair bit this year, but stabilise at around 17 percent in the mid-term. RIM, meanwhile is expected to continue its gradual decline in market share.

Gartner concurs with rival researcher IDC that the biggest market share gainer in the mid-term will be Microsoft. This gain isn't expected to begin kicking-in until 2012, which is when the first NokiaSoft phones are expected to be launched, so Gartner clearly believes, as do we, that the success of WP7 relies almost entirely on its relationship with Nokia.

The other figure worth taking note of is total sales. Gartner reckons smartphone sales will increase by 57.7 percent this year, 35 percent next year and then a further 75 percent in the three years to 2015, by which time sales will have topped a billion units. Yes, a billion.

"By 2015, 67 percent of all open OS devices will have an average selling price of $300 or below, proving that smartphones have been finally truly democratized," said Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner.

"As vendors delivering Android-based devices continue to fight for market share, price will decrease to further benefit consumers. 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 VP Carolina Milanesi reckons Android's big market share will have a halo effect onto tablets. "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 Milanesi.

"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."

Worldwide Mobile Communications Device Open OS Sales to End Users by OS (Thousands of Units)

Source: Gartner (April 2011)