Inspired Zdnet’s prediction of the smartphone market, I gazed into my own crystal ball for 5 reasons why Google Android will prevail in the coming years.
- Android is an open source operating system that welcomes every handset manufacturer. This means there will be many manufacturers churning out Android powered handsets.
- Android SDK is powerful, feature-rich and yet easy to use. Good SDK attracts good developers, who will develop more and better apps.
- Android app store (Market) does not restrict the type of applications. This means happy developers, more creative apps and makes the phone more than being just a phone.
- Android phones are highly usable usable with cool user interface, seamless Google’s integration, multitask-able, etc.. We know users love great phones.
- Android phones will have a huge variety, ranging from very low to very high price. This means Android is made affordable for any market segment.
Gartner forecasted the market share in 2012. I have my own:
- Symbian – 32%
- Android – 22%
- iPhone – 18%
- BlackBerry – 12%
- WinMo – 6%
- Others – 10%
Symbian will still top the market share due to its hardwork done in the last decade, as we have seen it trending down in the last few years. WinMo will go down even more if it continues using the Windows mentality. Android and iPhone will be the 2 most talk about mobile OS, with RIM doing catching up. The rest, including Palm Pre, will fight for survival.
I will review my crystal gazing ability in 2 years time..
HTC Dragon on Android