“Smartphones have become the preferred computer of the masses,” Howard Fosdick reports for OSNews.
“Sales surpassed those of personal computers in 2010, having grown over 50% per year for several years. Nearly 500 million smartphones shipped in 2011,” Fosdick reports. “This radically shifts the terrain in the consumer operating system competition that was, for years, firmly decided in favor of Windows.”
Fosdick reports, “Smartphones have decimated Windows’ long OS dominance in popular computing… Tablets play a role in this change, too. TechCrunch projects iPad sales of 66 million this year. Forrester Research optimistically predicts that tablet sales will explode to 375 million yearly by 2016… Google Android and Apple iOS are the big winners in this OS shakeup. BlackBerry OS and especially Symbian OS appear destined for lesser roles in the future. Samsung has a good niche with Bada. webOS and Tizen might become niche products or they could fail altogether. The big question is whether Microsoft and its partners can nurture a third smartphone ecosystem. If so, we’ll have three dominant standards and a handful of popular niche systems. Otherwise the Android/iPhone duopoly continues, with small market share for Windows, and larger possibilities for niche alternatives.”
Much more in the full article, including some very informative Asymco charts, here.