Android to dominate smartphone market by 2015

Worldwide smartphone sales are expected to peak at 468 million units, and Android will become the most used mobile operating system by the end of 2011, according to research from Gartner.

Smartphones will continue to break into the mainstream market, and are expected to break the one billion sales mark in 2015. Around 48 per cent of these devices will be running Android, the research suggested.

Apple's iOS is expected to remain the second most used platform until 2015, when it is predicted to be overtaken by Microsoft's Windows Phone operating system.

Gartner anticipates that the rapid rise of the Windows platform will be due mainly to Microsoft's partnership with Nokia.

Meanwhile, RIM's market share is predicted to decline from 16 per cent to 11 per cent in 2015 owing to increased competition in the consumer and business markets.

Analysts have factored in RIM's migration from BlackBerry OS to QNX, labelling it as a good move.

The transition is expected to take place in 2012, and RIM will be able to create more competitive products as the QNX platform brings more advanced features than the BlackBerry OS, said Gartner.

However, the research will not make pleasant reading for Symbian, as Gartner expects the once dominant platform to virtually disappear. Market share is expected to tumble from a healthy 37 per cent in 2010 to a negligible 0.1 per cent in 2015.

The price of handsets is also expected to to stabilise, according to Gartner. By 2015, 67 per cent of all open OS devices will have an average selling price of $300 (£184) or below, explained Roberta Cozza, principal analyst at Gartner.

"As vendors delivering Android-based devices continue to fight for market share, price will decrease to further benefit consumers," he said.

"Android's position at the high end of the market will remain strong, but its greatest volume opportunity in the longer term will be in mid- to low-cost smartphones, above all in emerging markets."