Phone flood
Market researcher IDC has pronounced "the smartphone floodgates are open wide," in forecasting global smartphone unit growth of 55 percent this year and for total units sold to approach a cool billion by the end of 2015.
305 million smartphones were shipped last year and IDC expects that to increase to 472 million this year. This growth rate was extrapolated to arrive at a figure of 982 million by 2016, but given the large margin for error in such forecasts it may as well be a billion.
"The growth trend is particularly pronounced in emerging markets where adoption is still in its early days," said IDC's Kevin Restivo. "As a result, the growth in regions such as Asia/Pacific and Latin America, will be dramatic over the coming years."
Once more IDC has predicted good things for Microsoft's mobile platform - WP7 - principally on the back of anticipated growth when Nokia completes its wholesale move onto WP7. If you look at the table below, a more or less straight swap from Symbian to WP7 is anticipated, but that's assuming a lot.
More than anything else it's assuming that Nokia's brand and routes to market remain largely intact in that time. But with every passing day Nokia is getting bad press and negative commentary from analysts. Earlier this week Texas Instruments cut its forecast, blaming reduced demand from Nokia. Meanwhile even Nokia's current depressed share price is not considered good value, and Microsoft is struggling to give WP7 handsets away.
Also surprising is the forecast that BlackBerry will grow slightly faster than iOS. Many commentators are drawing parallels between RIM and Nokia when it comes to aging platforms, and you have to wonder if there's room for more than three platforms to thrive, but IDC backs RIM to defend its position robustly.
Worldwide Smartphone Operating System 2011 and 2015 Market Share and 2011-2015 Compound Annual Growth Rate
|
Operating System |
2011 Market Share |
2015 Market Share |
2011-2015 Unit CAGR |
|
Android |
38.9% |
43.8% |
23.7% |
|
BlackBerry OS |
14.2% |
13.4% |
18.3% |
|
Symbian |
20.6% |
0.1% |
-68.8% |
|
iOS |
18.2% |
16.9% |
17.9% |
|
Windows Phone 7/Windows Mobile |
3.8% |
20.3% |
82.3% |
|
Others |
4.3% |
5.5% |
27.6% |
|
Total |
100.0% |
100.0% |
20.1% |
Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, June 9, 2011.
Note: Market share based on unit shipments.
