Set for domination
A couple of market researchers have issued reports recently that add further weight to Android's claim as the leading smartphone platform.
Canalys reckons Android became the world's leading smartphone platform in Q4 2010, with total shipments of 33.3 million (not 32.9 million as the release says) units overtaking Symbian's 31 million. And many Symbian phones are not ‘smartphones' by the modern definition of the term
Apple and RIM are a distant third and fourth with 16.2 million and 14.6 million respectively, while Microsoft has actually lost ground since the launch of WP7. The total number of smartphones sold almost doubled year-on-year to 101.2 million.
"2011 is set to be a highly competitive year with vendors looking to use new technology, such as dual-core processors, NFC and 3D displays to differentiate their products and maintain value," said Canalys principal analyst Chris Jones.
Meanwhile Bloomberg is reporting on a study from Strategy Analytics, which says Android increased its tabloid market share ten-fold - albeit from a very low starting point.
In Q4 of last year almost a quarter of all tablets sold were Android. This is especially remarkable when you consider Android has yet to be optimised for tablets and the most popular unit - the Samsung Galaxy Tab - is three inches smaller than the iPad as the same price.
This just confirms what demand there is from much of the market for an alternative to Apple. Few question the quality of its products, but clearly many people just don't want to be sucked into its software and services ecosystem.
This sets the precedent for Android to seriously challenge Apple for tablet supremacy when products running the tablet-optimized Honeycomb, which will be formally launched this Wednesday, and is expected to hit the streets in a few months' time, especially since many will probably be cheaper than the iPad.
"If you were to ask me in two years time, will Apple have less than 50 percent of the global tablet market, I think that's a certainty," said Neil Mawston of Strategy Analytics in an interview with Bloomberg.
