Back in November 2009, Apple’s iPhone phones made up 50 per cent of smartphone usage wordwide. The overall penetration of smartphones in the handsets market stood at 44 per cent at the time.
This year, projections show that smart devices (both tablets and smartphones) account for 70 per cent of all devices sold. Figures show that this is around 800 million smartphone devices sold this year only.
Forecasts from research firms indicate the figure is expected to jump come next year, to about 1.2 billion smart devices for the year 2013.
Trends in smartphone operating systems shows an increase for Android running devices, including tablets. This can be attributed to increased uptake of Samsung made phones and tablets, in particular the Samsung Galaxy SIII and the newly released Samsung Galaxy Note II.
The increase smart devices uptake can also be attributed to workplace trends where businesses are replacing (not entirely) traditional PCs with tablets, and other company related device strategies.
Android device penetration in enterprise is on an upward trend, and this will prove a challenge for IT departments in terms of security and information control. The Android growth will also pose a challenge for RIM which has traditionally focused on business users.
Business strategies are now shifting to multiple device options and are also driven by application availability and flexibility. This will definitely eat into the Symbian and BlackBerry OS based devices market share.
The smartphones in use globally passed the 1 billion mark around September this year, and is expected to hit the 2 billion mark sometime in 2015.
With the launch of Windows 8 and Windows phone 8 by Microsoft, the above numbers are set to increase as we see more OEMs coming up with smart devices to run this OS.
