Come 2015 end, Android is poised to dominate the global smartphone space as a new study reveals that the platform will account for 81.2 percent, leading other ecosystems with ease.
According to an International Data Corporation (IDC) report, despite an overall slowdown in smartphone shipments worldwide, the shipments of Android-powered will see an increase by 9.5 percent when compared to 2014. In 2015, nearly 1.16 billion Android-powered smartphones have been shipped globally. Buoyed by this growth, the ecosystem will account for a substantial percent of the global smartphone market pie - 81.2 percent by end of this year.
The IDC believes that what would propel Android forward would be efforts by companies such as Xiaomi and Cyanogen to stand out from rivals.
"Android's market share is expected to grow slightly from 81% in 2015 to 82% over the forecast period," notes the IDC report. "Given its global footprint and application/services ecosystem, IDC fully expects some form of Android to hold a dominant share of the smartphone OS space for the foreseeable future."
The future also looks promising for the ecosystem as the IDC estimates that in the next four years i.e. by 2019, the number will grow further and 1.54 billion Android handsets will be shipped, giving Android an 82.6 percent share of the global smartphone space.
Per the folks at IDC, Android is also set to benefit from a CAGR of 7.7 percent in the next four years. By comparison, the anticipated CAGR for iOS is 6.5 percent in the same period, which translates to 263.4 million iPhones being shipped and the platform accounting for a 14.1 percent market share.
By 2015 end, the IDC anticipated 226 million iPhones to be shipped, which will give Apple a 15.8 percent share of the global smartphone market pie.
For those wondering how Windows Phone will fare, IDC estimates 31.3 million units will be shipped this year, giving Microsoft's operating system a meager share of 2.2 percent.
In 2019, Windows Phone holds little promise as the Microsoft platform is anticipated to account for 2.3 percent of the global smartphone pie thanks to 43.6 million units being shipped. The CAGR is projected to be 4.5 percent. However, Microsoft can take solace in the fact that IDC estimates the ecosystem to have a better year-over-year growth rate of 11.4 percent in 2019 when compared to either Android (4.8 percent) or iOS (3.1 percent).
