UPDATED 12:19 EDT / APRIL 07 2011

Android and Windows Phone 7: Top Players By 2015

While we have heard, many times, about the surging demand and progress of Google’s Android OS, a recent report by Gartner has forecast that Android is soon going to dominate the smartphone market, probably by 2015. Additionally, Windows Phone 7 OS will be on the second place, Apple’s iPhone OS will be third and Blackberry’s would be dip to the fourth spot after four years.

Android’s dominance started showing these signals right at the end of last year, when the sales of smartphones having this operating system started surging up.  Along with Gartner, IDS also recognized that Android surged to become the top global smartphone OS in the latter half of 2010. During 2011, Android OS will have the 39.5 percent share of total smartphone market, reports Gartner. This will amount to around 467 million smartphones, jumping to over 48 percent in year 2012. While this massive growth was already expected from Android, it is Windows Phone 7 that will experience the biggest change, leaping to second place by 2015.

As of now, Windows’ mobile OS accounts for only 5 percent of total market share, but will have the 20 percent after four years. Apple’s iPhone is expected to have 19.4 percent in 2011, but is likely to dip to 17.2 percent in 2014.

Lately, Android has been seeing several positive developments. For example, the first smartphone to have Russia’s Glonass satellite navigation system that was launched this week runs on Android 2.2 platform, which clearly reflects that Android remains a powerful platform for navigation companies, even as they seek new formats for reaching consumers, and monetizing data. Another report by ABI suggests that in 2016, Google’s open-source Android platform will capture 45 percent of the global smartphone market.

Google is also making efforts to to team up with finance groups like MasterCard and Citigroup to complete the use of Near-Field Communication for financial transactions—the technology, already embedded in Android phones. As Google and Android are making advancements in this area, how could Microsoft stay behind and consequently it is also thinking of bringing it to the Windows Phone 7.

Additionally, the number of developers is also growing on Windows Phone 7 Operating System as we found that Windows Phone 7 app toolkit has been downloaded by 1.5 million times. The toolkit’s 1.5 million downloads have been done by 36,000 registered developers, adding to this number the 1,200 new developers that register each week. We believe this is a really good sign!


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