

Android Will Seize 45% of Smartphone Market by 2016, Says ABI Research - rbanffy
http://www.abiresearch.com/press/3651-Android+Will+Seize+45%25+of+Smartphone+Market+by+2016%2C+Says+ABI+Research

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codingthewheel
45% might even be understating it. Android's share of the smartphone market is
already around 30% in the US ([http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-
Wireless/Android-Tops-iO...](http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-
Wireless/Android-Tops-iOS-RIM-with-29-Smartphone-Share-100765/)). That's a
bigger piece of the pie than either iPhone or RIM. Unless Apple aggressively
targets the low end, a majority Android share (50%+) of the smartphone market
shouldn't surprise anybody.

~~~
YooLi
Unless Apple has no interest in the low end.

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CrazedGeek
"Of the newer entrants in the smartphone OS arena, Windows Phone 7 and
Samsung’s Bada are both aimed at low- to mid-range handsets."

Er... WP7 definitely isn't aimed at the low-end (
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Windows_Phone...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Windows_Phone_7#Minimum_requirements)
) and Bada seems to be aimed at all varieties of phones (
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bada_%28opera...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bada_%28operating_system%29)
).

~~~
dstein
But once WP7 is installed it becomes a low-end phone.

~~~
moblivu
Don't judge the platform now. Look at iOS when it started or even worst,
Android in the G1!

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Animus7
To say that Android will seize some percentage of the market by 2016 is
baseless, especially if you're basing it on yesterday's numbers. "Research"
like this is fatally flawed for one simple reason: 2016 is five years away.

The way that tech is moving these days, in five years most of the current
platforms will either be replaced or will have evolved into something entirely
different. Keep in mind that five years ago we didn't even have iPhone at all.

This is the same reason that I laugh when I see a company planning to
"overtake Product X" in five years -- it shows a misunderstanding of how
quickly this market is moving. The future is rarely like the past, and unless
you're innovating, you're losing.

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zdw
Somewhat myopic prediction focused only on one subportion of one market when
the "device" market is much larger.

I'd guess that in 4 years, Apple will still have >80% of the tablet and
portable media player markets.

And those customers, especially those who had iOS devices prior to smartphone
ownership, are likely to want iOS phones. That usage funnel will likely
continue - if the PMP space hasn't seen any compelling Android inroads as of
yet, why do people think the "large PMP" tablet space will be any different?

~~~
dagw
The number of people unwilling or unable to own a phone that costs more than
$200 will remain huge for years to come. Apple will never sell a sub $200
phone, Android already does. All of those people with their $50 Nokia's are
not going to replace them with $600-$700 iPhones, but they might replace them
with a $100 Android phone.

~~~
reddot
Don't forget that Apple usually sells the previous generation iPhone 8GB for
cheaper. You can now get a 3GS for $50 on ATT. I still use a 3GS, and it's
still a great phone.

~~~
dagw
That is $50 with a very expensive monthly plan. I was talking about prices for
unlocked phones on a pay as go plan.

~~~
reddot
Ah. That was unclear from your post. I know a few people who have gotten the
Samsung Intercept on Virgin Mobile and are fairly unhappy with it. It feels
really slow and the built-in apps aren't that great, according to my friends
(especially, calendar and contacts). It's still a $200 phone. Perhaps the LG
Optimus is better? I also have an original DROID running 2.2 and am not very
impressed with it.

------
melling
This might be true. What I'd like to see is a website that keeps score of
everyone's predictions. The reality is that anything could happen in 5 years.
Phones are easy to replace. Not much lock-in.

~~~
raganwald
_Phones are easy to replace. Not much lock-in._

Phones, yes. Phones with apps, not so much: Now you have an obstacle to
changing platforms.

~~~
bmj
Never thought of that, and it's clearly an interesting point, but, given that
software companies are _generally_ distributing apps across platforms, how
much lock in does really exist? If I'm using app A on an iPhone, then switch
to an Android device, I wonder if it's in the best interest of the app
provider to provide some sort of sync service?

~~~
reddot
For free apps, the lock in is minimal. But if someone has an investment of
$100 or however much in paid apps, that's another story.

------
rbarooah
Will we even be still talking about 'smartphones' in 2016 - a term made up by
analysts after all. These are all just a particular size of wireless tablet
computers.

------
cletus
I'm not sure why anyone bothers to read let alone make these predictions. Last
week's was how WP7 would overtake iOS phones within a few years, the basis of
which seemed to be to replace Nokia's Symbian numbers with WP7 units. Yeah,
in-depth research there.

Frankly I'm more willing to bet money on Nokia fading into irrelevance.

Message to Elop: if someone needs to pay you billions of dollars to do
something, it's probably not a good idea, especially when that other party
will be getting most if not all of that money back in licenses anyway.

Another fallacy with such "analyses" is that they assume static goalposts. To
me--and I suspect to Apple--smartphones are no longer what matters. In this
sense they're much like the MP3 market. Sure, Apple dominates that market but
it's just not of primary importance anymore.

The real prize isn't smartphones (IMHO), it's tablets. A tablet is much more
of a general purpose device than a phone. I use my phone for calls, messages,
checking my email and the maps/directions. I use my iPad for Web browsing,
reading, research, watching movies, playing games and, well, basically
_everything else_.

I think Android got a real leg up in the phone market because if you give
someone a phone that makes and receives phone calls and SMSs then you've given
most people what they need most of the time. Not everyone (with a smartphone)
is into buying apps, music and other digital content on or for their phones.

Tablets strike me as different because that ecosystem is _far_ more important.
The availability of digital content, the suitability (eg hardware consistency)
as a game platform, etc all advantages that are going to be extremely
difficult to match anytime soon (IMHO).

Apple sold 15M iPads in 9 months last year. This year predictions are running
at 40-50M (if not more). We'll start to get a better idea of this when Apple
releases their earnings report in late April (and a much better picture in
July).

I would put the competition for the iPad at _at least_ 1-2 years behind the
iPad and I'm not sure what'll happen first: 100M iPads (likely by the end of
2012 easily) will have been sold or 10M of _everything else_.

Back to the phone market: I think this is actually a reasonably conservative
estimate in that I believe in 5 years it quite likely there'll only be two
games in town (meaning with >10% market share), being iOS and Android, so I
fully expect Android to have 45% of that.

