Gartner's iPhone, Android predictions radically revised in a year and a half
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.
Gartner's vision in 2009: open wins, but mostly Microsoft does
Gartner's most recent prediction is an acknowledgment that it had no real notion of what was going to happen just 18 months ago. Gartner's original prediction in late 2009 essentially just plotted continued, conservative growth paths out for Apple, RIM and Palm, the three major vendors who own their own operating system. It drew tremendous growth in sales for Nokia's platform, likely due to the company releasing Symbian as an open source project, even though Nokia continued to be the primary (and almost exclusive) user of Symbian.
Android was also given a dramatic projection of unit growth of nearly 11x over three years, as it was just beginning to gain traction. In late 2009, Verizon Wireless was gearing up to replace its former dependance upon RIM's BlackBerry platform with new Android-based partnerships with HTC and Motorola under its "Droid" branded campaign.
However, the biggest and most difficult to fathom prediction by Gartner was Microsoft's reversal of fortune for Windows Mobile. That platform had already clearly lost its initial momentum, with sales remaining flat since the iPhone debuted in 2007. Despite those dim prospects, while Gartner suggested in 2009 that RIM's sales would nearly double and Apple's would almost triple, it stated that Microsoft's would grow more than 4.5x in the same three year period.
Rather than that happening, Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform continue to decline through 2010 despite a heavily promoted deal with LG. And when Microsoft released WP7 as its improved new version of the platform and ended compatibility with previous versions of Windows Mobile, sales tanked completely.
Gartner's 2009 predictions were essentially a bet that openly licensed platforms would make tremendous gains in the market while Apple and RIM would only make incremental progress. While Gartner was correct in guessing that Android would make big gains, it also stated that both Microsoft and Nokia would also grow their platforms at a dramatic rate.
Given that Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile all compete to served the same finite group of phone makers, the prediction that all three platforms would each explode and far outpace the growth of the independent Apple and RIM doesn't appear to have a solid logical foundation. In the end, Gartner's 2009 prediction made three bold claims about change in the smartphone industry's trajectory, two of which were completely wrong and one of which wasn't bold enough. It also clearly underestimated Apple and RIM.
Gartner's vision in 2011: open wins, but mostly Microsoft does
Gartner has now corrected its vision with a new set of predictions that now see Symbian collapsing rapidly, following Nokia's announcement that it would stop promoting its use internally and more recently that it is shutting down its open source project supporting it.
The second major correction in vision sees Android continuing to explode in adoption, growing nearly as fast as it did in 2010, when it was protected from much direct competition with the iPhone in the US, while it was being exclusively backed by Motorola, and while Microsoft and Symbian were both experiencing retooling fiascos.
Gartner also corrected its expectations of the iPhone. It now expects Apple to nearly double its sales this year, leaping from 47 million to 91 million. Next year however, it says Apple will only grow by an additional 28 million units, and then continue to expand by just over 35 million per year through 2015. The means that over the next five years, Gartner thinks the iPhone will grow by just 4x.
Instead of projecting three years into the future, Gartner is now peering a full five years out. That's when it sees Microsoft nudging past the iPhone by 35 million units to become the second place mobile operating system behind Android. Microsoft's resurrection of WP7 is expected to come via help from Nokia, with the fruits of their partnership resulting in a doubling of sales this year alone, despite the fact that Nokia doesn't expect to deliver its first WP7 model until the end of the year at the earliest.
Across five years, Microsoft's unit sales are expected to grow by an astounding 17.9x, more than twice as fast as Android and 4.4x faster than Apple.
Gartner's profitable projections
Gartner's projection of WP7 overtaking the iPhone and outpacing Android growth by 2015 is literally the only good news available for Windows Phone 7, which has completely flopped as a consumer platform despite a half billion dollar ad campaign.
Even Microsoft's leading partner LG called its launch as disappointing and the software itself as being "a bit boring."
If Gartner's historical predictions were more accurate, it would be harder to suggest that the firm was simply concocting its numbers to fit a particular outcome for profit rather than modeling numbers to deliver a useful outlook for the market.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time. Microsoft's confidential memos leaked during its monopoly trial state that the company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Gartner as it "lobbied" the firm to change its outlook to flatter Windows NT and denigrate competing Network Computers in the late 90s prior to that trial.
More recently, Gartner analysts began predicting in 2005 that Windows Mobile 5 would cause big trouble for Symbian, something that never happened. In 2009, the outlook for Windows Mobile was so bleak that even Gartner refused to say it would surpass the iPhone in three years. The situation for Microsoft has only grown worse over the last year and a half, with the company's Nokia deal seeing little positive comment in the tech media.
Gartner's latest prediction now claims Microsoft's WP7 will grow by more than 1,790 percent over the next five years, significantly faster than Android or the iPhone over the same time period, faster than Android grew last year, and faster even than Gartner incorrectly predicted Windows Mobile would grow back in 2009.
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.
Gartner's vision in 2009: open wins, but mostly Microsoft does
Gartner's most recent prediction is an acknowledgment that it had no real notion of what was going to happen just 18 months ago. Gartner's original prediction in late 2009 essentially just plotted continued, conservative growth paths out for Apple, RIM and Palm, the three major vendors who own their own operating system. It drew tremendous growth in sales for Nokia's platform, likely due to the company releasing Symbian as an open source project, even though Nokia continued to be the primary (and almost exclusive) user of Symbian.
Android was also given a dramatic projection of unit growth of nearly 11x over three years, as it was just beginning to gain traction. In late 2009, Verizon Wireless was gearing up to replace its former dependance upon RIM's BlackBerry platform with new Android-based partnerships with HTC and Motorola under its "Droid" branded campaign.
However, the biggest and most difficult to fathom prediction by Gartner was Microsoft's reversal of fortune for Windows Mobile. That platform had already clearly lost its initial momentum, with sales remaining flat since the iPhone debuted in 2007. Despite those dim prospects, while Gartner suggested in 2009 that RIM's sales would nearly double and Apple's would almost triple, it stated that Microsoft's would grow more than 4.5x in the same three year period.
Rather than that happening, Microsoft's Windows Mobile platform continue to decline through 2010 despite a heavily promoted deal with LG. And when Microsoft released WP7 as its improved new version of the platform and ended compatibility with previous versions of Windows Mobile, sales tanked completely.
Gartner's 2009 predictions were essentially a bet that openly licensed platforms would make tremendous gains in the market while Apple and RIM would only make incremental progress. While Gartner was correct in guessing that Android would make big gains, it also stated that both Microsoft and Nokia would also grow their platforms at a dramatic rate.
Given that Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile all compete to served the same finite group of phone makers, the prediction that all three platforms would each explode and far outpace the growth of the independent Apple and RIM doesn't appear to have a solid logical foundation. In the end, Gartner's 2009 prediction made three bold claims about change in the smartphone industry's trajectory, two of which were completely wrong and one of which wasn't bold enough. It also clearly underestimated Apple and RIM.
Gartner's vision in 2011: open wins, but mostly Microsoft does
Gartner has now corrected its vision with a new set of predictions that now see Symbian collapsing rapidly, following Nokia's announcement that it would stop promoting its use internally and more recently that it is shutting down its open source project supporting it.
The second major correction in vision sees Android continuing to explode in adoption, growing nearly as fast as it did in 2010, when it was protected from much direct competition with the iPhone in the US, while it was being exclusively backed by Motorola, and while Microsoft and Symbian were both experiencing retooling fiascos.
Gartner also corrected its expectations of the iPhone. It now expects Apple to nearly double its sales this year, leaping from 47 million to 91 million. Next year however, it says Apple will only grow by an additional 28 million units, and then continue to expand by just over 35 million per year through 2015. The means that over the next five years, Gartner thinks the iPhone will grow by just 4x.
Instead of projecting three years into the future, Gartner is now peering a full five years out. That's when it sees Microsoft nudging past the iPhone by 35 million units to become the second place mobile operating system behind Android. Microsoft's resurrection of WP7 is expected to come via help from Nokia, with the fruits of their partnership resulting in a doubling of sales this year alone, despite the fact that Nokia doesn't expect to deliver its first WP7 model until the end of the year at the earliest.
Across five years, Microsoft's unit sales are expected to grow by an astounding 17.9x, more than twice as fast as Android and 4.4x faster than Apple.
Gartner's profitable projections
Gartner's projection of WP7 overtaking the iPhone and outpacing Android growth by 2015 is literally the only good news available for Windows Phone 7, which has completely flopped as a consumer platform despite a half billion dollar ad campaign.
Even Microsoft's leading partner LG called its launch as disappointing and the software itself as being "a bit boring."
If Gartner's historical predictions were more accurate, it would be harder to suggest that the firm was simply concocting its numbers to fit a particular outcome for profit rather than modeling numbers to deliver a useful outlook for the market.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time. Microsoft's confidential memos leaked during its monopoly trial state that the company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Gartner as it "lobbied" the firm to change its outlook to flatter Windows NT and denigrate competing Network Computers in the late 90s prior to that trial.
More recently, Gartner analysts began predicting in 2005 that Windows Mobile 5 would cause big trouble for Symbian, something that never happened. In 2009, the outlook for Windows Mobile was so bleak that even Gartner refused to say it would surpass the iPhone in three years. The situation for Microsoft has only grown worse over the last year and a half, with the company's Nokia deal seeing little positive comment in the tech media.
Gartner's latest prediction now claims Microsoft's WP7 will grow by more than 1,790 percent over the next five years, significantly faster than Android or the iPhone over the same time period, faster than Android grew last year, and faster even than Gartner incorrectly predicted Windows Mobile would grow back in 2009.
Comments
The Digler Rule:
If an analyst revises his claims in ways that favor Apple, he's "gained insight".
But if an analyst revises his claims in ways that are unflattering for Apple, he's "not very accurate".
Danny can play with his spreadsheet all he wants,staying up late to try to find the most alarming-looking charts he can muster from his selective portrayal of the data, but none of his button-pushing can change the most salient fact which seem to have him so upset: Android is currently outselling iOS.
Poor Danny.
You just can't seem to absorb the fact that there is no such thing as "Android"! "Android" is a mish-mash of dozens of mutually incompatible platforms that you like to throw into a blender and turn into the Google-Aid™ smoothies that have addled your brain cells so thoroughly.
You just can't seem to absorb the fact that there is no such thing as "Android"! "Android" is a mish-mash of dozens of mutually incompatible platforms that you like to throw into a blender and turn into the Google-Aid? smoothies that have addled your brain cells so thoroughly.
Dang, that's some serious case of denial. So what OS are all those not-iOS phones using? Feeling that Apple's system is superior, or that the ecosystem serves users better is one thing. Claiming Android doesn't exist?
The Digler Rule:
If an analyst revises his claims in ways that favor Apple, he's "gained insight".
But if an analyst revises his claims in ways that are unflattering for Apple, he's "not very accurate".
Danny can play with his spreadsheet all he wants,staying up late to try to find the most alarming-looking charts he can muster from his selective portrayal of the data, but none of his button-pushing can change the most salient fact which seem to have him so upset: Android is currently outselling iOS.
Poor Danny.
The Market Rule:
Which Android? There are many? Which handset? There are many. That's like saying more people drink water than Coke? Yes they do.
Also I thought the article was about Gartner? Are you a Gartner analyst or someone who buys a lot of Gartner subscriptions and has a highly rated product? you know, the upper right quadrant of the copyrighted "Magic Quadrant"
The market rule says Apple, AT&T and Verizon make a lot of money on iPhones, companies using the many variations of Android, not so much
The Digler Rule:
If an analyst revises his claims in ways that favor Apple, he's "gained insight".
But if an analyst revises his claims in ways that are unflattering for Apple, he's "not very accurate".
Danny can play with his spreadsheet all he wants,staying up late to try to find the most alarming-looking charts he can muster from his selective portrayal of the data, but none of his button-pushing can change the most salient fact which seem to have him so upset: Android is currently outselling iOS.
Poor Danny.
yes, "outselling" !! the FREE product is OUTSELLING !! LOL LOL LOL
Make sure I never hire you : here boss, sales are up 5000% since we started giving it away !
The Digler Rule:
If an analyst revises his claims in ways that favor Apple, he's "gained insight".
But if an analyst revises his claims in ways that are unflattering for Apple, he's "not very accurate".
Danny can play with his spreadsheet all he wants,staying up late to try to find the most alarming-looking charts he can muster from his selective portrayal of the data, but none of his button-pushing can change the most salient fact which seem to have him so upset: Android is currently outselling iOS.
Poor Danny.
In all fairness, what does this article say that is a) about Android or b) unflattering to Android?
I think the point, if you have basic reading skills, is that Gartner's predictions are not any sort of effort at scientific modeling, but rather just numbers to back up Microsoft, with Android thrown in to capture headlines.
Attacking the author of the article, particularly with such a baseless accusation that has nothing to do with the article, just makes you look like an ignorant mouthy moron.
If anything, DED pointed out that Gartner's first prediction under-estimated the growth of Android in 2009 and its correction (clearly being criticized) was corrected to indicate Apple and RIM would do far better than Gartner originally said. So what exactly are you bleating about?
Android is currently outselling iOS.
No, Android is outselling iOS on phones. Overall iOS is still winning by a large factor, if you count all iOS devices (iPod touches, iPads and iPhones). This matters because the app market includes all of these devices.
No, Android is outselling iOS on phones. Overall iOS is still winning by a large factor, if you count all iOS devices (iPod touches, iPads and iPhones). This matters because the app market includes all of these devices.
That's a basic error right there. Android isn't OUTSELLING anything. It's given away free to anybody who will use it, including Mama San's Homebrew Smartphone (with fried rice). Sure, if you give something away, you'll get lots of users, but that doesn't mean their products compete with a professional, secure, reliable and highly functional ecosystem like Apple's iOS.
It doesn't mean someone has SELECTED Android in preference to iOS. They've just used something that's free to get their (often junky) hardware shipped.
I think we need to wait to see what Nokia and MS come up with before we can get firm grasp on what to expect for the future of those companies. Even Dell has finally managed to turn out a decent looking and functioning smartphone. If Dell can better itself in HW design then I can’t count out MS+Nokia in a future arsenal of WP7 devices.
yes, "outselling" !! the FREE product is OUTSELLING !! LOL LOL LOL
Make sure I never hire you : here boss, sales are up 5000% since we started giving it away !
Right?! A free OS v an OS that isn’t even sold or giving away to any vendor. MS has 90% marketshare with a paid for desktop OS and Gartner isn’t even predicting that Android can manage 50% despite being free and apparently so incredibly superior. What the hell is wrong with Android that it hasn’t become a monopoly at this point? I think he’s been hit on the hit head by that Museum Glass® he’s always rambling on about. Hell, he can’t even spell Dilger’s name correctly.
I’m not sure why AI allows this guy to post. He doesn’t ever add anything to the thread and will attack Dilger and AI on every thread regardless of what is stated. Just yesterday he attacked AI for being wrong for posting a rumour as a rumour.
When Apple re-releases the iPhone 3GS as a $200 contract-free smartphone, Android growth will flat-out
Just curious: Android growth will flat out what? Flat out triple its share? Flat out die? Flat out prove Jobs right|wrong?
The Digler Rule:
If an analyst revises his claims in ways that favor Apple, he's "gained insight".
But if an analyst revises his claims in ways that are unflattering for Apple, he's "not very accurate".
Danny can play with his spreadsheet all he wants,staying up late to try to find the most alarming-looking charts he can muster from his selective portrayal of the data, but none of his button-pushing can change the most salient fact which seem to have him so upset: Android is currently outselling iOS.
Poor Danny.
This article is about pointing out the false accounting of data by gardner. Not about flavoring Apple. You are such a Apple hater, fanboy! Just relax already.
No, Android is outselling iOS on phones. Overall iOS is still winning by a large factor, if you count all iOS devices (iPod touches, iPads and iPhones). This matters because the app market includes all of these devices.
Actually it is conceivable that Android devices are outselling all iOS devices combined. In the 4th quarter of last year Apple was reported to have sold 33 million iOS devices (iPods, iPhones, iPads). At around the same time Google showed 300,000 devices sold per day. So a straightline projection of iOS devices for twelve months of this year would be 132million. Doing the same with Android figures yields 110 million. But Android tablets just came to market. It would only take a very few million of several different tablets to let Android overtake Apple's iOS devices in totality. Add to that Android currently growing at a faster pace than iOS. Could that 300,000 Android devices per day three months ago have grown to 350,000 or more per day now? The clear lead that iOS had in the middle of 2010 may be much more tenuous now. IMHO, it is a possibility that Android is currently outselling all iOS devices combined.
Who's selling more devices really doesn't matter of course. It's plain that Apple is making much more profit from their devices, especially combined with iTunes music and AppStore revenue. But making the statement "overall iOS is outselling Android by a wide margin" may not be true.
If Dell can better itself in HW design then I can?t count out MS+Nokia in a future arsenal of WP7 devices.
Hey Soli, thanks for the laugh!
I can't speak about the current Dell way of doing things (e.g. committing much of a budget to R&D) but Michael Dell used to speak proudly about how his company had a minimal R&D budget because the simply ordered stuff off the shelf from various mfrs, got some cheap lalor to slap everything together, then load a Windoze OS onto it. He used to think that was the way to do do it, differentiating Dell from the crowd by selling by mail order and providing decent customer service, certainly not by coming up with any ground-breaking designs.
Is it truly different now?
Dang, that's some serious case of denial. So what OS are all those not-iOS phones using? Feeling that Apple's system is superior, or that the ecosystem serves users better is one thing. Claiming Android doesn't exist?
They're using dozens of partially or completely incompatible OSs with enough of a family resemblance that people like to lump them together with a one-word descriptor?but thinking "Android" is a single, monolithic OS is just delusional.
Suppose the 90% of the market that Windows PCs represent had dozens or hundreds of somewhat incompatible versions so that you couldn't be sure that any given software would run on your machine? (Kind of like the early DOS days, which I'm old enough to remember.) Would you crow about "Windows" having 90% of the market? Maybe you would, but who would benefit? Not the end-user, just Microsoft.
Similarly today, The only ones benefiting from "Android's" marketshare are Google and the spammers they're pimping your eyeballs to.
Android isn't OUTSELLING anything. It's given away free to anybody who will use it
It doesn't mean someone has SELECTED Android in preference to iOS. They've just used something that's free to get their (often junky) hardware shipped.
iPhone 3GS is available for free in Europe and for $49 in US.
iPhone 3GS is available for free in Europe and for $49 in US.
And where are the two-year-old "Android" phones that are "selling" at all, even for free?