From Nielsen, via Engadget, comes this chart comparing market shares of smartphone operating systems:
One interesting detail is that Android is already in the lead. And while iOS and Blackberry are essentially limited by the fact that they each only run on one brand of hardware, Android can grow another 15% just by taking market share from the crap OSes that its handset manufacturers were forced to use before Android hit the market- systems like Symbian (which is now officially dead) and Windows7 (which is a total PR failure, regardless of whether or not it’s any good) and Palm (coulda woulda shoulda) and, well, whatever else is out there.
But it’s also pretty much a given that Android will continue to take share from Blackberry and from Apple, because everyone who is forced to use Blackberry hates it since the phones and the OS just aren’t user-friendly, and Apple keeps using its muscle to screw its users just to make a buck.
So it looks like this is Android’s game to lose.
