Symbian

The pros weigh in: 25% of all smartphones will be Android by 2014

Both think Android will rise, but both are underestimating.

IDC came out with a report earlier this week saying that Android would be exploding, taking a great deal of market share away from other smartphone platforms.  By 2014, they think Android will be on a quarter of all smartphones, behind only Symbian.

Gartner this morning took it one step further.  Their forecasts have Android neck and neck with Symbian in 2014.

I think they MORE

Gartner: Watch Android overtake Apple

How the major smartphone operating systems carved up the global market in Q2

The headlines pop out of the pie charts at right, drawn from data released by Gartner, Inc. Thursday.

Nokia's (NOK) Symbian, Research in Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry OS and Microsoft's (MSFT) Windows Mobile continue to lose share in the worldwide smartphone market.
Apple's (AAPL) iOS grew modestly in Q2, from a 13% market share to 14.2%.
Google's (GOOG) Android grew explosively, from MORE

Smartphone wars: The big picture

Apple, Google, RIM, Microsoft, Nokia, Palm, Linux -- who's in it for the long haul?

Two news events -- the imminent arrival of Research in Motion's (RIMM) newest entry and Apple (AAPL) falling behind Google (GOOG) in U.S. market share -- has triggered some interesting long-term thinking about where we are in the battle for smartphone supremacy.

Here's who we've been reading (while we are supposed to be on vacation):

MG Siegler in MORE

Chasing Apple's 'galloping pace'

In the converging market for mobile devices, vendors vie for second place, says an analyst

Things look bleak for everybody but Apple (AAPL) and maybe Google (GOOG) in a brief report to clients issued Monday by Deutsche Bank's Chris Whitmore.

"The distinction between smartphones, tablets and low-end notebooks is blurring rapidly," he writes. "Currently there are just two main competitors where we believe Apple's user experience is industry leading and Android is MORE

Smartphone traffic is up 193% in a year

Led by iPhone and the Androids. Traffic from the iPod touch is growing even faster.

Smartphone traffic is up. Feature phone share is down. And traffic from mobile Internet devices (like the iPod touch) that don't have built-in phones is booming -- even before Apple releases the iPad.

That's the thrust of the the latest report by AdMob, the mobile advertising network snapped up last fall by Google (GOOG) before Apple (AAPL) MORE

Apple, Android, RIM gain market share

Nokia, Microsoft and Linux continue to lose ground in the shift to smarter phones

A report from Gartner issued Tuesday confirmed the trends reported three weeks earlier by IDC. Both tracking firms are registering a massive shift as users around the world trade in devices designed to make phone calls and send text messages for what are essentially pocket-sized computers.

Gartner recorded a 0.9% drop in cellphone sales for 2009 and a MORE

How Apple and Nokia divvy up the world

Measured by mobile ad traffic, it's still a two-smartphone race

Forget North and South. East and West. First World, Second World and Third.

According to AdMob, the mobile advertising company acquired late last year by Google (GOOG), the world is divided -- at least in terms of smartphone usage -- into two parts: Apple's and Nokia's.

In its Mobile Metrics Report for Dec. 2009, issued Thursday morning, AdMob surveys eight regions -- from MORE

The smartphone wars, one year later

The iPhone leads the pack, Android is gaining, everybody else is losing share

It's been a year since Google (GOOG) released Android OS, the open-source smartphone operating system widely perceived as the most likely to overtake Apple's (AAPL) iPhone in the long run.

As it happens, Google this month also purchased AdMob, the world's largest purveyor of mobile phone advertising. So this seemed as good a time as any to take a MORE

The best analysis money can buy

Daniel Eran Dilger finds anti-Apple bias in Gartner's research

"Looking into its crystal ball, Gartner Group has predicted that Google's Android will become the second largest smartphone platform by 2012," writes Daniel Eran Dilger in the one-man blog he grandly calls Roughly Drafted Magazine. "Problem is, nobody's talking about how terrible Gartner is at predicting things, or that Gartner's 'research' has historically been paid for by special interests."

So begins Dilger's reaction MORE

Competitors gaining on the iPhone

Apple's (AAPL) iPhone still has what Net Applications describes as a "commanding lead" in the smartphone search market, but its competitors are gaining fast, according to preliminary data issued overnight Tuesday.

When Net Applications issued its first survey of this market last month, it reported that nearly two out of every three Web searches conducted from a mobile phone in February were made from an iPhone. As Net Applications measures it MORE