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Future of Android and other Mobile Operating Systems

Google's Android mobile operating system will easily dominate the smartphone market by 2016, and it will be followed closely by Apple's iOS.

Symbian captured about 36 percent market share in 2010 while Android was running on about 23 percent of all smartphones that shipped last year. Apple's iOS held a solid 15 percent of the market share, while Research in Motion's BlackBerry OS captured about 16 percent market share last year. Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 share was mere 0.6 percent. Android market share will continue to grow in the next five years. Prediction says that Android will be running on about 45 percent of all smart phones by 2015.

The estimation says that Apple's market share will increase by 20 percent in 2015, while RIM will touch 14 percent share. It is assumed that Samsung's Bada operating system could touch a 10 percent market share in 2015. It is also estimated that Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 OS will have a market share of only 6.5 percent and Windows Mobile will witness even less than 0.5 percent of the mobile operating system market.

Among the Open-Source mobile platforms - MeeGo, Android and Symbian - Android is the clear winner. 500,000 new Android-powered phones and tablets are now being activated each day worldwide. This number is growing at 4% per week. In the last quarter, Apple sold about 19 million iPhones, for a daily activation rate of about 210,000. Including iPads and iPod touches in the survey, Apple's activation rate was about 325,000.

Does this matter?

Mobile is becoming more like a platform game where the developers are building applications that run on top of mobile devices. These applications are making these devices more valuable to users - market share is a critical component. If Android holds a dominant market share, the way Microsoft's windows did in the 1990s, Apple will get a setback & eventually iOS's value as a platform will plunge. Apple has learned several lessons from its failure in 1990s, one of the factor was competition in terms of price. iPhones and iPads cost the same or less than Android phones.

Apple still has an advantage that it didn't have in the 1990s - Android is still a fragmented platform with so many different versions and customizations. Fragmentation of different versions of the Android Platform is still a problem for developers.

A smart move from Apple can be to work on the pricing model and plan to sell a 'cheap' iPhone to compete against Android threat.

Tags: android, future-mobile, future-of-mobile-os, ios, ipads, iphone, meego, microsoft, mobile-os, mobile-platfrom, More…nokia, symbian

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Comment by Gold Hassan on July 12, 2011 at 5:01pm: The market of course may be seeing a new trend , but all these fact and figure belong to Western world (Europe, US) ... So for the South Asian giants these facts and figures are still ghost suits. Here the truth (of course about fact and figures) is totally different from what its being projected world wide. Lets take an example of India : How many Android Mobile phones do you know available in Market and when you come to little lower range the Number is so sparse that you can cut down fingers on that.

This scene is totally different from US and Western World where the Operator business affects the customers selection of Mobile Handsets. For the Open Market Like India, the facts take a U- Turn. May be Symbian is on the verge of Extinction (as some people think), but I feel for South Asian Tigers the Symbian is still going to play important till the end of 2016. Well, It seems very strange why I chose, 2016, obiviously it has to do something with the Market. The Market research in India shows that a Customer (On average, taking account of people who dont have mobile and people who switch their mobile fortnightly) changes one mobile in at least 5 years (New mobile Cycle). May be the Scenario will change at that time, but iOS has serious issue in growth in Asian Market (the Next biggest Consumer market, also do not ignore the upcoming Continent Africa )

The Extinction of Symbian is anyway going to leave a void in Market.

The Comparison of Symbian Vs Android (iOS is no where in South Asian Market (comparably) gives a bad picture of Symbian (disowned by Nokia, no Mentor and Patronizer) wrt to GOOGLE Android.

Android phones are still to compete a lot of other Java based low price mobile, popular, and Desi.

Conclusion: THis is Chaos, Nokia is Out (If only Nokia hadnt pick up the dumped OS (Windows) by HTC.),Once most promising MeeGO is departing (Nokia N 900 is the first and Last Meego Mobile), Android is soaring slowly, iOS with Apple is still smiling happy with bulging pokects....Other RIM and Other platform have very Target user base, generally targeted now by Android and iOS.

So its a complete Chaos.....Only time will tell...For South Asian Market..Fact and Figures are still illusions.