Android market share will peak this year, but its golden days might be over, a new research report from IDC suggests. IDC report forecasts mobile OS market share till 2016, during this period from 2012 to 2016 Android will be the number one mobile OS, but it’s meteoric rise will end this year.Surprisingly Windows Phone will take the second spot passing iOS by 2016 to become second most popular mobile operating system.
IDC predicts 2012 will see mobile shipments grow slightly more than 4% year over year, this is the slowest growth rate since 2009. Phone manufacturers will ship 1.8 billion mobile phones this year, compared to 1.7 billion units shipped in 2011.
The slow growth rate predicted is because of the 10.0% decline feature phone shipments this year. At the same time smartphone shipments will grow at 38.8% year over year to offset the feature phone market. The smartphone growth will be mostly led by Android, iOS and Windows Phone.
IDC predicts that Android will remain the king od mobile OS, but it’s share will decline from 61.0% this year to 52.9% in 2016. Windows Phone will gain substantially from 5.2% this year to 19.2% in 2016 to pass iOS as second mobile OS in terms of market share. iOS will maintain it’s market share through out the period with a slight decline from 20.5% this year to 19.0% in 2016 to settle in the third place. BlackBerry OS will remain in the scene with 5.9% share in 2016, with the current situation RIM is in, it is hard to believe these numbers for Blackberry.
Symbian will be dead by 2014, Symbian is gradually decreasing and it will accelerate as Nokia will move away from Symbian to Windows Phone fully.
