The worldwide converged mobile devices market is expected to grow 55.4 percent this year compared to 2009 amid greater-than-expected demand for smartphones. This is 10 percent higher than the previous forecast from IDC. IDC now expects mobile phone vendors to ship 269.6 million converged mobile devices this year compared to the 173.5 million units shipped in 2009. The increased market forecast for smartphones comes amid the launch of several new models, such as the BlackBerry Torch, EVO 4G and the iPhone 4, in recent months. Additional product introductions and an expected flurry of smartphone buying activity in the second half of the year will push the market well above previous expectations. For H1, vendors shipped a total of 119.4 million units or 55.5 percent more than the 76.8 million units shipped during H1 2009.
As the worldwide smartphone market continues to grow at a strong rate, the market dynamics among mobile operating systems continue to shift. Longtime operating systems leaders BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Mobile are about to or have already launched refreshed OS to compete with recent newcomers Android and iOS. The latter OS have taken away both mindshare and market share from the old regime, and have helped propel the market forward, said IDC. According to the firm, Android is the wild card, deserving close observation for the rest of this year and the years to come. Users have quickly warmed to Android, comparing it to iOS due to its ease of use and a growing mobile application storefront. Other vendors such as Dell, Kyocera, LG Electronics and Samsung will soon help grow the Android market.
IDC now expects this year's overall mobile phone market to grow 14.1 percent, or 1.5 percent higher than its previous forecast. The outlook for 2011 is also very strong, according to the market researchers. Despite uncertainty about the economy, the smartphone market is expected to increase 24.5 percent in 2011. However, smartphone growth will decline progressively over the course of IDC's five-year forecast period. In 2014, the market is expected to rise by just 13.6 percent. IDC believes the market will comfortably support up to five OS players over the next five years, and shorter replacement cycles and an ample feature phone to smartphone upgrade opportunity means the smartphone OS market will remain fragmented but healthy for the foreseeable future.
Symbian will maintain its number one standing throughout the forecast period with 32.9 percent share in 2014. However, it will lose share, primarily to Android, which is expected to grow its share fastest over the forecast period, rising from 16.3 percent to 24.6 percent. Meanwhile, Windows Mobile is expected to regain some of the share it has lost over the past two years and BlackBerry's share will remain relatively constant while that of iOS will decline gradually.
