Apple would surely be on cloud nine after their success in the lawsuit against Korean based manufacturer Samsung, but a research composition by popular analytics firm Digitimes has revealed that the Apple will not be the growth winner for this year. This study is purely based on a comparison of percentage growth and not on absolute number of units that will be eventually sold. The firm predicts that despite the release of the much anticipated iPhone 5 Apple will not dominate in terms of growth relative to its own performance last year. The firm also predicts a similar scenario for Android. So whom can we expect to be the biggest losers this year? Not surprisingly RIM and Symbian are expected to be the biggest losers by the end of 2012.
The numbers being used by Digitimes compares the YoY shipments, which clearly justifies why RIM and Symbian are expected to have a major drop in growth rates. Symbian’s numbers dropped by nearly 66% last and RIM on the other hand posted a drop of 41%. Hopes for Symbian are all but gone. However, we could expect RIM to bounce back in case the yet to be release BlackBerry 10 Operating System is received well. RIM’s new OS will only release early next year, so the sales numbers are expected to decline until then. Android is also expected to show a decline in growth percentage, simply because of its high growth numbers in the preceding years. However, Android would be looking at a 90% increase which sums up to 425 million units compared to the 224 million, last year. Android could also end up having 70% market share (smartphone market) by the end of the year.
Digitimes asserts that Apple could see a 35% increase in its growth number. This translates an increase of 125 million units in comparison to last year. We know the biggest losers i.e. RIM and Symbian, the mediocre performers, Apple and Android, which leaves winner. Without any doubt Digitimes was confident that the Nokia/Microsoft partnership’s Windows 8 OS will post a 108% increase this year. Although this translates to only 21 million units given WP’s small share, these are just positive signs that point towards the emergence of a third major player in the smartphone market following Apple and Android. There are still five months to go before we get the official results, but many critics seems to agree with these findings.
