Android to power growth of Asia-Pac smartphone market: Ovum

KUALA LUMPUR: The smartphone market in the Asia-Pacific is expected to double in size by 2016 with about 200 million units will be shipped and outperform the wider mobilemphone market, according to Ovum.

The independent telecoms analyst said in its forecast on Thursday, March 24 that global sales would hit 653 million units, of which 30.7% would be from the Asia-Pacific market.

“Android will drive the growth and will emerge as the dominant platform, dramatically outperforming Apple with a massive 20% lead on market share,” it said.

Ovum principal analyst Adam Leach said the success of the Android platform is being driven by the sheer number of hardware vendors supporting it at both the high and low ends of the market.

On the outlook for smartphones, Ovum forecast smartphones would grow at a compound annual growth rate of 12.5% between 2010 and 2016 and will account for about 32% of the mobile phone market in the Asia-Pacific.

Leach said the smartphone market would see significant growth over the next five years, once again outperforming the wider mobile phone market.

“We will see dramatic shifts in dominance for smartphone software platforms, with Android storming into the lead with 38.7% per cent market share, compared to Windows Phone with 22.6%, by 2016 in AP alone”, he said.



According to Ovum’s forecast, just behind Windows Phone will be Apple’s iOS, with 19% market share by 2016, followed by BlackBerry OS, with 9.2%.

Leach expected at least one other platform to achieve mainstream success within the forecast period. This could be an existing player in the market such as Bada, WebOS, or MeeGo, or it could be a new entrant to the market place.

Leach said the partnership between Nokia and Microsoft has redrawn the smartphone market and would result in a significant reduction in shipments of Symbian-based handsets as Nokia transitions to Windows Phone as its primary smartphone platform.

However, Nokia still expects to ship 76 million Symbian-based handsets so there will be shipments beyond 2012 and in some regions into 2016.

“For Microsoft the deal provides a committed handset partner that has the potential to make Windows Phone a mainstream smartphone platform. The risk to Microsoft is that other handset makers may choose not to compete with Nokia and may turn their backs on Windows Phone,” Leach said.