Google's Android smartphones leap into lead, likely to stay there

SAN JOSE, Calif. — By the end of 2010, Google's Android smartphone operating system will in a single year have leapfrogged competing mobile systems like Apple's iPhone, Research in Motion's BlackBerry and Microsoft Windows phones in global popularity, while Android will challenge Nokia to become the world's most popular smartphone operating system by 2014, research firm Gartner said Friday.

Issuing its annual global smartphone forecast, Gart-

ner said the explosive popularity growth of Google's mobile operating system will make Android the world's second-most-popular operating system by the end of this year, with Android accounting for 17.7 percent of worldwide sales — up from 3.9 percent at the end of 2009. Google says it is seeing more than 200,000 Android phones activated every day.

With manufacturers like Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG and Motorola planning to offer budget Android phones this fall, Android will become a mass-market technology that will have double the iPhone's worldwide market share by 2014, Gartner said.

"It's a matter of Android really going more into the hands of the mainstream user," said Roberta Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner. "The iPhone will remain focused toward the higher end of the market, while through the end of this year and into 2011, all that growth you see in Android will come from the fact that most of the vendors who are backing it will release cheaper smartphones."

By the end of 2014, Gart-

ner says Android and Nokia's Symbian operating system each will account for about 30 percent of the global smartphone sales, while Apple's iOS will be third with about 15 percent of the global market, and RIM will be fourth with about 12 percent. The projections account for Gartner's expectation that Verizon, the largest U.S. wireless carrier, will begin to sell the iPhone in coming months, Cozza said.