Gartner is predicting that Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform will surpass Apple’s iPhone by 2015, roughly matching similar predictions published by IDC in March. Gartner said that Microsoft’s alliance with Nokia to provide Windows Phone 7 (and its successors) to Nokia for its smartphones will result in Windows Phone 7 becoming the second largest smartphone OS behind Android, and ahead of iPhone.
The research firm said that Apple’s share of the smartphone market with the iPhone will peak in 2011, with 19.4% market share, and decline to 17.2% by 2015, even while shipments of iPhones increase from 62.6 million units to 189.9 million units during the same time period.
“This reflects Gartner’s underlying assumption that Apple will be interested in maintaining margins rather than pursuing market share by changing its pricing strategy,” Gartner said in the report published Thursday. “This will continue to limit adoption in emerging regions.”
As for Android, Gartner believes that Google’s OS will continue its explosive growth through 2011 and into 2012, when it will capture some 49.2% of the market. Android unit growth will continue through 2015, but the platform’s share will decrease slightly to 48.8% in 2015. This growth will be pushed, in part, by adoption of the OS into ever-cheaper low-end devices, according to the company.
“As vendors delivering Android-based devices continue to fight for market share, price will decrease to further benefit consumers”, Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner, said in a statement. “Android’s position at the high end of the market will remain strong, but its greatest volume opportunity in the longer term will be in the mid- to low-cost smartphones, above all in emerging markets.”
Finding new life in Nokia’s hardware, Gartner believes Windows Phone 7 will grow to capture 5.6% of the market in 2011, to 10.8% in 2012, and 19.5% in 2015, and the company made no bones about the fact that this prediction is based, “solely by virtue of Microsoft’s alliance with Nokia.”
The two companies announced earlier this year that Nokia would be abandoning its own Symbian OS in favor of Windows Phone 7. Gartner threw another dig at Microsoft by adding, “Although [Microsoft’s projected growth] is an honorable performance it is considerably less than what Symbian had achieved in the past, underlying the upward battle that Nokia has to face.”
Research In Motion (RIM) and its BlackBerry device will continue its slide, declining from 13.4 market share in 2011 to 11.1% in 2015, but the company will also see its overall unit shipments grow from 62..6 million units in 2011 to 122.9 million units in 2015.
In March, IDC issued similar projections, placing Android as the #1 smartphone OS in 2015 with 45.4% of the market, Windows Phone 7 (or its successor) at #2 with 20.9%, and Apple’s iPhone/iOS as #3 with 15.3%. RIM’s BlackBerry was also #4 in IDC’s projections, with 13.7% market share.
Worldwide Mobile Communications Device Open OS Sales to End Users by OS (Thousands of Units)
OS | 2010 | Market Share | 2011 | Market Share | 2012 | Market Share | 2015 | Market Share | |||
Symbian | 111,577 | 37.6% | 89,930 | 19.2% | 32,666 | 5.2% | 661 | 0.1% | |||
Android | 67,225 | 22.7% | 179,873 | 38.5% | 310,088 | 49.2% | 539,318 | 48.8% | |||
Research In Motion | 47,452 | 16.0% | 62,600 | 13.4% | 79,335 | 12.6% | 122,864 | 11.1% | |||
iOS | 46,598 | 15.7% | 90,560 | 19.4% | 118,848 | 18.9% | 189,924 | 17.2% | |||
Microsoft | 12,378 | 4.2% | 26,346 | 5.6% | 68,156 | 10.8% | 215,998 | 19.5% | |||
Other Operating Systems | 11,417.4 | 3.8% | 18,392.3 | 3.9% | 21,383.7 | 3.4% | 36,133.9 | 3.3% | |||
Total Market | 296,647 | 467,701 | 630,476 | 1,104,898 | |||||||