Android Will Seize 45% of Smartphone Market by 2016, Says ABI Research | Hacker News Reader

Android Will Seize 45% of Smartphone Market by 2016, Says ABI Research

abiresearch.com

12 pointsrbanffy18 comments

45% might even be understating it. Android's share of the smartphone market is already around 30% in the US (http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Android-Tops-iO...). That's a bigger piece of the pie than either iPhone or RIM. Unless Apple aggressively targets the low end, a majority Android share (50%+) of the smartphone market shouldn't surprise anybody.

Unless Apple has no interest in the low end.

"Of the newer entrants in the smartphone OS arena, Windows Phone 7 and Samsung’s Bada are both aimed at low- to mid-range handsets."

Er... WP7 definitely isn't aimed at the low-end ( https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Windows_Phone... ) and Bada seems to be aimed at all varieties of phones ( https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bada_%28opera... ).

But once WP7 is installed it becomes a low-end phone.

Don't judge the platform now. Look at iOS when it started or even worst, Android in the G1!

To say that Android will seize some percentage of the market by 2016 is baseless, especially if you're basing it on yesterday's numbers. "Research" like this is fatally flawed for one simple reason: 2016 is five years away.

The way that tech is moving these days, in five years most of the current platforms will either be replaced or will have evolved into something entirely different. Keep in mind that five years ago we didn't even have iPhone at all.

This is the same reason that I laugh when I see a company planning to "overtake Product X" in five years -- it shows a misunderstanding of how quickly this market is moving. The future is rarely like the past, and unless you're innovating, you're losing.

Somewhat myopic prediction focused only on one subportion of one market when the "device" market is much larger.

I'd guess that in 4 years, Apple will still have >80% of the tablet and portable media player markets.

And those customers, especially those who had iOS devices prior to smartphone ownership, are likely to want iOS phones. That usage funnel will likely continue - if the PMP space hasn't seen any compelling Android inroads as of yet, why do people think the "large PMP" tablet space will be any different?

The number of people unwilling or unable to own a phone that costs more than $200 will remain huge for years to come. Apple will never sell a sub $200 phone, Android already does. All of those people with their $50 Nokia's are not going to replace them with $600-$700 iPhones, but they might replace them with a $100 Android phone.

Don't forget that Apple usually sells the previous generation iPhone 8GB for cheaper. You can now get a 3GS for $50 on ATT. I still use a 3GS, and it's still a great phone.

That is $50 with a very expensive monthly plan. I was talking about prices for unlocked phones on a pay as go plan.

Ah. That was unclear from your post. I know a few people who have gotten the Samsung Intercept on Virgin Mobile and are fairly unhappy with it. It feels really slow and the built-in apps aren't that great, according to my friends (especially, calendar and contacts). It's still a $200 phone. Perhaps the LG Optimus is better? I also have an original DROID running 2.2 and am not very impressed with it.

The prices he mentions are unsubsidized and contract free.

This might be true. What I'd like to see is a website that keeps score of everyone's predictions. The reality is that anything could happen in 5 years. Phones are easy to replace. Not much lock-in.

Phones are easy to replace. Not much lock-in.

Phones, yes. Phones with apps, not so much: Now you have an obstacle to changing platforms.

Never thought of that, and it's clearly an interesting point, but, given that software companies are generally distributing apps across platforms, how much lock in does really exist? If I'm using app A on an iPhone, then switch to an Android device, I wonder if it's in the best interest of the app provider to provide some sort of sync service?

For free apps, the lock in is minimal. But if someone has an investment of $100 or however much in paid apps, that's another story.

Will we even be still talking about 'smartphones' in 2016 - a term made up by analysts after all. These are all just a particular size of wireless tablet computers.

I'm not sure why anyone bothers to read let alone make these predictions. Last week's was how WP7 would overtake iOS phones within a few years, the basis of which seemed to be to replace Nokia's Symbian numbers with WP7 units. Yeah, in-depth research there.

Frankly I'm more willing to bet money on Nokia fading into irrelevance.

Message to Elop: if someone needs to pay you billions of dollars to do something, it's probably not a good idea, especially when that other party will be getting most if not all of that money back in licenses anyway.

Another fallacy with such "analyses" is that they assume static goalposts. To me--and I suspect to Apple--smartphones are no longer what matters. In this sense they're much like the MP3 market. Sure, Apple dominates that market but it's just not of primary importance anymore.

The real prize isn't smartphones (IMHO), it's tablets. A tablet is much more of a general purpose device than a phone. I use my phone for calls, messages, checking my email and the maps/directions. I use my iPad for Web browsing, reading, research, watching movies, playing games and, well, basically everything else.

I think Android got a real leg up in the phone market because if you give someone a phone that makes and receives phone calls and SMSs then you've given most people what they need most of the time. Not everyone (with a smartphone) is into buying apps, music and other digital content on or for their phones.

Tablets strike me as different because that ecosystem is far more important. The availability of digital content, the suitability (eg hardware consistency) as a game platform, etc all advantages that are going to be extremely difficult to match anytime soon (IMHO).

Apple sold 15M iPads in 9 months last year. This year predictions are running at 40-50M (if not more). We'll start to get a better idea of this when Apple releases their earnings report in late April (and a much better picture in July).

I would put the competition for the iPad at at least 1-2 years behind the iPad and I'm not sure what'll happen first: 100M iPads (likely by the end of 2012 easily) will have been sold or 10M of everything else.

Back to the phone market: I think this is actually a reasonably conservative estimate in that I believe in 5 years it quite likely there'll only be two games in town (meaning with >10% market share), being iOS and Android, so I fully expect Android to have 45% of that.

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