Android shipments to grow by 900% annually in 2009: Reports

Google's Android is witnessing an increased traction in the recent times and a number of dominant players are opting for it. According to the recent Gartner report, Android is going to be the second-largest smartphone platform in as little as three years.

The mobile OS is predicted to climb to 14.5% of the market, or about 76 mn phones sold per year, by the end of 2012. As a consequence, it would whittle Symbian's marketshare down to 39% and just slightly overtake the iPhone, which would have 13.7% of the market or 71.5 mn devices. As of now the market is dominated by Nokia's Symbian.

The complete Gartner forecast for smartphone OSes by the end of 2012 puts Symbian on top with 203 mn devices sold, and 39% of the market. Android will be second with nearly 76 mn units sold, and 14.5% of the market.

This is supported by a report by Strategy Analytics. "We forecast global Android smartphone shipments to grow an impressive 900% percent annually during 2009," says Tom Kang, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics,

Neil Mawston, Director at Strategy Analytics, added, "Android has fast been winning healthy support among operators, vendors and developers. A relatively low-cost licensing model, its semi-open-source structure and Google's support for cloud services have encouraged companies such as HTC, Motorola, Samsung, T Mobile, Vodafone and others to support Android OS. It is now in a good position to become a top-tier player in smartphones over the next two to three years."

In India as well more than 20 handsets are likely to be launched on Android OS. Various handset manufacturers, including Samsung, LG and HTC, have committed their support to Android. Recently, Aricent also announced to launch new android-optimized middleware and application suite to enhance the user experience. The reasons for this support of Android in the markets is not tough to guess. Android will bring down the costs of the handsets relatively and at the same time being an open source software, it has a competitive advantages as compared to Symbian or Microsoft. Also, the added factor that users can easily play online real time multiplayer games or the location-based services will be more easily accessible gives a big push for the operators and vendors to go for the new Android experience.

It is worth mentioning that the Android gained early traction in the United States in the second half of 2008 and it is gradually spreading its presence into Europe and Asia during 2009.

Google is well funded and appears to be committed to driving evolution of the Android platform. Ken Dulaney, analyst with Gartner says that many factors support the growth in popularity of Android, but chiefly because of Google backing of Android and the range of cloud computing functions and related applications that Google will make available in coming years.

The success of Android has to be seen realistically. It should be remembered that T-Mobile G1, which was the first Android product release, only won a lukewarm response. Nonetheless, the upcoming products are well planned. As Gartner analysts Dulaney says that in 2010, as many as 40 models of Android devices will ship, and the next OS update, code-named Donut, will ship in the second quarter.

Seems like Google has got it right again and Microsoft's ambitions of pushing Windows on mobile are not likely to be very successful.

archanasi@cybermedia.co.in