Android to Become No.2 Worldwide Mobile Operating System in 2010 and Challenge Symbian for No.1 2014
 

The worldwide mobile operating system (OS) market will be dominated by Symbian and Android, as the two OSs will account for 59.8 percent of mobile OS sales by 2014, according to Gartner, Inc.

Symbian will remain at the top of Gartner's worldwide OS ranking due to Nokia's volume and the push into more mass market price points. However, by the end of the forecast period, the No. 1 spot will be contested with Android, which will be at a very similar share level.

Communication service providers' (CSPs') marketing and vendor support for Android-based smartphones will drive the platform to become the second-largest platform, following Symbian, by year-end 2010 (see Table 1). This is almost two years earlier than Gartner predicted a year ago.

"The worldwide mobile OS market is dominated by four players: Symbian, Android, Research In Motion and iOS," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Launches of updated operating systems ? such as Apple iOS 4, BlackBerry OS 6, Symbian 3 and Symbian 4, and Windows Phone 7 ? will help maintain strong growth in smartphones in 2H10 and 2011 and spur innovation. However, we believe that market share in the OS space will consolidate around a few key OS providers that have the most support from CSPs and developers and strong brand awareness with consumer and enterprise customers."

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It's already #1 here in the US. I would imagine it will top Symbian before the 2014 date predicted in the article.

would second that should be sooner than 2014 ;-) thanks for the article.

Symbian dominates the market because it was the software bundled on the largest cell phone manufacturer (Nokia). It's hard to topple an incumbent OS.

Had my Galaxy S (it's considered the best Android device on the market although still runs Eclaire) for about 4 months now after owning all the previous iphones except the latest one. It's definitely powerful, but there is something about my wife's iphone4 that is more refined and easier to use. It's hard to explain but it just works.

Android is still in it's infancy and like most early OS's, has a lot of bugs that still need to be worked out. I'm confident it will get there soon and just the mentality of Google with respect to creating an open platform was what the mobile market needed. There is room in the market for 2 mobile OS's, just as there is room in the PC market for Windows & Mac OS. Two different platforms geared for two different types of users, and the distinction carries over from why one buys Windows and one buys a Mac.

Wouldn't be surprised if they had 80% market share or better with 3-4 years.

The only 2 players in this game are iphone and droid. I think RIM blew pretty much their last chance with that pathetic phone they just released. This is going to end up just like PC/Mac did.

Id say Meego will be top os by 2014, it looks amazing.