The News Headlines

Gartner recently issued a new prediction of the direction of the smartphone industry, but its last one from 2009 doesn't suggest the company has very accurate foresight.
This week, Gartner said it believes that Google's Android platform would be used by 49 percent of all smartphones by 2012 and that by 2015, Microsoft's Windows Phone would leap to second place among smartphone platforms (not counting tablets or media players), overtaking Apple's iOS iPhone. The firm supplied very precise numbers for its claims, down to the thousands of units.

Last prediction wasn't very accurate

Just a year and a half ago, the same firm made similar bold predictions about the smartphone industry that suggested the same dramatic turn around for Microsoft. In fact, the only real similarity between the company's 2009 predictions and its 2011 predictions is the idea that Microsoft would be selling about 68 million phones by 2012, and taking around 12 percent of the smartphone industry.

Every other predicted element in Garner's outlook has changed significantly in the last year and a half. Nokia's Symbian, once seen as holding on to the lion's share of smartphones in 2012 (with more market share than it managed to retain last year) is now expected to dry up and blow away, given Nokia's plans to drop support for it and focus on WP7 later this year.

Android, originally expected to reach essentially a dead heat with Apple, Microsoft and RIM (all reaching within one percentage point of having 13 percent shares of the market), is now seen as taking half of the market, while Apple's share is now expected to grow much faster than Gartner originally predicted just 18 months ago (grabbing 19 percent as opposed to just 13 by 2012).

Gartner also revised its outlook for RIM, suggesting less of a loss in market share than originally anticipated back in 2009. The firm also slashed its collective outlook for Palm's WebOS and other smartphone operating systems (such as non-Android Linux) in half.

It foresees so little growth among WebOS, other (non-Android) Linux, and other mobile operating systems that it now dumps them all into one category. Note that prior to Android's release, many of Google's licensees (including Motorola) were already broadly using Linux, which Android incorporates.
AppleInsider | Gartner's iPhone, Android predictions radically revised in a year and a half