It seems like only yesterday that we thought Steve Jobs owned the future of the mobile world and beyond. Anti-Appleites lobbied against his walled garden approach and despaired at his unstoppable tech machine. That was until that little green robot came along, of course. Then the anti-Apple world, plus me, rejoiced in their new hero.
And now it’s predicted Google’s Android is on course to become the leading mobile operating system (OS) in the world by 2014, according to industry analysts.
Gartner, one of the top research and analysis companies in the world, has run the numbers and decided that Android could very well hold the #1 spot by 2014. Nokia’s Symbian OS is likely to hold the top spot until 2014, and the analysts aren’t certain Android will have taken the lead by then.
Gartner says Nokia’s hold on the lower-end of the market supports Symbian. Nokia is currently hoping to take a piece of the high-end smartphone market with the much-hyped Nokia N8 and is consolidating its hold at the lower-end with releases such as the Nokia C3 and Nokia X6 8GB.
However, it says Symbian will not be able to hold off Android for much longer. Google is forging some solid relationships with manufacturers and retailers based on promoting its brand as a major selling point for a phone, look at the promotion of the Samsung Galaxy S that had significant focus on the phones Android OS for evidence of this clever win-win tactic.
The driving factor behind Android’s explosive growth? A push into budget and mainstream devices – something we’ve already started to see with the IDEOS and Intercept. Samsung in particular is named as making a large push soon, with the other major players entering in soon after.
It is this approach and Google’s open platform model that has helped it to take the mobile world by storm this year, with rivals caught napping. And this report is a clear indication that fight backs such as iOS 4.0 and 4.1, BlackBerry OS 6.0 and Windows Phone 7 will not be enough to stop the Google tide.
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