And The Mobile Winners Are…

There was an interesting chart (see below) in a CNN Money article the other day on the mobile market and projected market share of the software leaders. Google is highlighted now as one of the world's biggest players in smartphones. No surprise really with Android projecting to capture 17.7% of the global mobile device market by year's end, according to a Gartner forecast. But what’s really interesting are the market projections by Gartner, IDC and others out to 2014 and beyond. It’s basically a war in the making:

· By 2014, both Gartner and IDC expect Google to be neck-and-neck with Nokia in smartphone OS market share.

· By 2015, Informa Telecoms & Media predicts that Android will take the lead, attracting more than a half billion users.

· Blackberry is projected to slip to 11%.

· Apple’s iOS is projected to take only about 15% (huge contrast to Steve Jobs’ recent financial quarterly conference call and assessment of RIM and Google).

· Note the sorry projection for Microsoft with their Windows play- forecasters aren’t making bets that Ballmer and crowd will get it right- or at least not hit a home run with their Windows Mobile. MS just announced partnerships with Samsung, LG, Dell and HTC, which will make devices to run the new smartphone software. There are three phones going to be ready by Christmas and are aggressively priced against the iPhone and Blackberries.

One could argue (ok- me) that last year was really the start of the competitive war in smartphones. Before then, it was really Blackberry and Nokia that dominated the smartphone space globally. Then Apple became an absolute success story with their iPhone sales. And Android has become the Trojan Horse. So here’s one way of reading these projections: i) the applications for Android will far exceed the offerings of the other smartphone players, ii) Nokia and Android will be in both the consumer and enterprise application space and iii) Blackberry remains focused in enterprise and iv) Apple has hit the glass ceiling.

You could also argue the projections another way- that we really don’t know what we don’t know. For 2010, Android is an undeniable hit in North America. Apple’s apps have been targeted primarily on the consumer. And Blackberry (if the Analysts are right) has been caught off-guard with the speed of entry with other players and being unable to maintain their market dominance with their stable of products. But this is still 2010 and anything can happen. Tablets didn’t really take off until Apple’s iPad this year and now this market is exploding. It only takes a SIM card to put a phone on these things; some say that Dell’s Streak is a tablet smartphone! I personally don’t think that Apple is going to let Google walk all over them. And Microsoft may be late in mobile, but back in the early Internet days, they didn’t see the market but caught up. As for RIM, you don’t sell 100 million Blackberries and then call it quits.

I think the market is wide open and I wouldn’t place bets on the projections. It’s going to be one wild ride, that’s for sure!