Android Will Blow Past Apple And RIM To Become Second Biggest Mobile OS This Year
Google's Android will become the second-biggest mobile operating system in the world sometime this year, according to the latest report from Gartner. — Nokia's Symbian will have more marketshare …
Context & Ripple Effects
Gartner had previously projected Android would reach the No. 2 position in 2012; its revised timetable brings that competitive milestone forward by roughly two years, accelerating the significance of its earlier Android forecast. The forecast still leaves Nokia's Symbian ahead, so the shift is a reordering below the market leader rather than a prediction of Android leadership.
First-order effects
- Gartner's 2010 forecast places Google's Android ahead of Apple and RIM in worldwide mobile-OS scale before year-end, changing the expected near-term ranking among those platforms.
- Nokia's Symbian retains the top position in Gartner's forecast, preserving Nokia's lead even as Android closes the gap beneath it.
Second-order effects
- Apple and RIM face a sharper competitive benchmark: Android's projected move to second place makes platform scale a more immediate point of comparison against Google's ecosystem.
- Nokia must defend Symbian's lead against an Android trajectory that Gartner now expects to mature materially faster than its 2009 projection.
Third-order effects
- If Gartner's revised forecast holds, mobile OS competition is moving toward a more concentrated hierarchy led by Symbian and Android, with Apple and RIM competing from smaller positions rather than defining the market's top two ranks.
The trend: Android's expected rise from a 2012 No. 2 projection to a 2010 target signals a faster-than-anticipated consolidation of mobile-platform scale around Google and Nokia's operating systems.