In the light of huge demand for smartphones, research firm IDC has decided to raise its forecast for global smartphone shipments in 2010 to 269.6 million units, leading to a year-over-year increase of 55.4 percent when compared with last year's 173.5 million shipments.
The adjusted sales figure, which is 10 percent higher than IDC had originally projected, can be attributed to the recent launches of a number of popular devices, such as the Apple iPhone 4, the HTC EVO 4G, the Samsung Galaxy S lineup, Verizon's Droid series and the BlackBerry Torch 9800.
The whole cell phone industry, on the other hand, will grow much slower than smartphones, according to IDC. The company now estimates the overall growth to be 14.1 percent this year, as opposed to the 2.8 percent decrease in shipments last year. In the next four years, smartphone sales are set to continue to go up, though at a progressively declining rate. In 2011, the market will see a 24.5 percent gain year on year, while in 2014, the increase will slow down to 13.6 percent.
The report also reveals projections for mobile OS market shares between 2010 and 2014. Although no single OS will dominate the industry, Google's Android will gain the largest market share at the expense of Nokia's Symbian and Apple's iOS. Four years from now, Symbian will remain the top with 32.9 percent share, but Android will snatch away BlackBerry OS's no.2 spot by boasting 24.6 percent share, up from 16.3 percent this year.
Though expected to drop from the second to the third place, BlackBerry OS's market share will stay about the same at 17.3 percent in 2014. Apple's iOS, now the fourth largest OS, will keep its position but suffer from the greatest loss in share, dropping from 14.7 percent to 10.9 percent. Last but not least, Microsoft's Windows Mobile will round up the top five with 9.8 percent of the market, up from 6.8 percent in 2010.
Taking the above predictions into consideration, we could expect that the smartphone craze, driven especially by the rapidly rising Android platform, will continue to sweep the entire handset landscape in the coming four years.
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