According to a report done by technology research firm IDC, by the time 2013 rolls around there will be approximately 390 million smartphones in the market. They estimate that about 17% of those will be Android smartphones. They expect that no mobile platform will see the rate of growth over the next few years the Android will see.
Android will experience the fastest growth of any mobile operating system. Starting from a very small base of just 690,000 units in 2008, total Android-powered shipments will reach 68.0 million units by 2013, making for a CAGR of 150.4%. Android will benefit from having a growing footprint of handset vendors supporting it.
What’s perhaps most surprising, however, is that they project the #1 smartphone OS, to be neither RIM’s Blackberry platform nor Apple’s OSX but rather Symbian. The high adoption rates for Symbian phones is largely due to Nokia’s popularity overseas. WebOS based devices such as the Palm Pre and Pixi are projected to struggle through 2013.
