Smartphone OS market share - 2012

Yes, you read it right: it's 2012. Gartner published a report (link: Computerworld) in which they forecast the following smartphone OS market share for 2012:

We could all see the trend which players remain, disappear or gain strong foothold for a while by now. Nokia has always been the strongest when it comes to smartphones and they will be able to keep their position according to Gartner. They have a huge loyal user base and Nokia as an Internet company and phone manufacturer in one will probably be able to fight successfully against its competitors.

Apple has great technical innovations (form factor, made touch trendy with multitouch, etc.) in addition to the ability to sell (how easy it is to forget about this!). Their tight control on most parts of the mobile value chain is very different compared to what their competitors do, but it has proven to affect user experience in the right way and made this business very profitable for the company.

Google is a goliath in Internet business with huge influence on people's lives already. They use this power to become successful in mobile business with a great strategy: cost reduction for everyone, let it be manufacturers, network operators, developers, users, etc.

All these companies are able to make people passionate about their devices. The term, convergence, has been already accompanied with smartphones in the past few years, however, it's always been about integrating something into the device: MP3 player, FM radio, digital camera, GPS, etc. This time it's different: we're living the age of integrating the mobile phone into an even bigger thing, a cloud called Internet. It's no surprise why Google is successful with Android: people are already dependent on their services and they "only" had to provide the means for mobile users to access these services via their beloved gadgets.

It wouldn't be surprising if these figures became true by 2012. All the remaining players are less innovative (Palm Pre is a copy of iPhone), struggling with finding their identity (M$), are not offering a portfolio that is wide enough (BlackBerry is a business phone), etc. It might be worth noting that data communication will be dominant by 2012 and will drive the growth of MID-market. Wonder if Gartner has reckoned with this, too.

Tote

Ps.: Google Chart API is our friend. :)