Android market share to peak this year

The worldwide mobile phone market will slow to a growth of just over four per cent this year, its lowest rate since 2009, due to a sharp decline in the feature phone market and sluggish global economic conditions, global market researcher IDC predicted.
The market researcher estimated that vendors will ship a total of nearly 1.8 billion mobile phones this year, as compared to 1.7 billion in 2011, and the total will rise to 2.3 billion in 2016.
Feature phones are still expected to make up 61.6 per cent of total shipments this year, but their sales will drop an estimated 10 per cent from 2011. In comparison, the smartphone market is forecast to grow by 38.8 per cent in 2012 to 686 million units.
The IDC projected Google's Android will remain the most shipped smartphone operating system over the course of the five-year forecast, though its share will peak this year at 61 per cent.
Microsoft's Windows will be the fastest-growing OS, going from an estimated 5.2 per cent market share in 2012 to 19.2 per cent in 2016, thanks to Nokia's strong presence in emerging markets.
Apple is expected to be stable over the period at around 20 per cent of the smartphone market, and Research In Motion (RIM) is expected to hold on to an around six per cent share.
Similarly, the market analysts at IDC predicted that Windows Phone will take almost 20 per cent of the smartphone market by 2016, overtaking Apple's IOS mobile operating system (OS).
According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Microsoft's market share will balloon to 19.2 per cent in 2016 from the 5.2 per cent market share it has today. Apple's share will drop from 20.5 to 19 per cent and Android market share will slip from 61 per cent to 52.9 per cent.