According to eMarketer, Apple is to pass Research In Motion as the leader of the US smartphone market this year, only to be overtaken by Android in 2012.
eMarketer, which bases its forecasts on analysis of research estimates and methodologies from multiple firms who monitor the smartphone market, estimates Apple took a 28% share of the US smartphone user market in 2010, just above the 24% of users who use a device running Android.
RIM’s share of the market is expected to decline to 25% in 2011, down from 30% in 2010.
eMarketer predicts that Google’s Android platform will continue to gain share through 2012, with 31% of all smartphone users owning an Android-powered handset (up from 6% in 2009).
By then, Apple’s market share is expected to clock off at 30%, up only slightly from 2009.
In the words of Noah Elkin, eMarketer principal analyst and author of a forthcoming report on mobile devices:
“With a growing roster of manufacturer and carrier partners in every major market and market segment, scale for Android is coming quickly in terms of device, market share, apps and ad revenues.”
In August 2005, Google acquired Android, a small startup company based in Palo Alto, CA. Android’s co-founders who went to work at Google included Andy Rubin (co-founder of Danger), Rich Miner (co-founder of Wildfire), Nick Sears (once VP at T-Mobile), and Chris White (one of the first engineers at WebTV). At the time, little was known about the functions of Android other than they made software for mobile phones. This began rumors that Google was planning to enter...
BlackBerry (formerly Research in Motion) is a Canadian designer, manufacturer and marketer of wireless devices and solutions for the worldwide mobile communications market. The company is best known as the developer of the BlackBerry smart phone. Blackberry technology also enables a broad array of third party developers and manufacturers to enhance their products and services with wireless connectivity to data. Blackberry was founded in 1984. Based in Waterloo, Ontario, the company has offices in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific....
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