So, when it comes to the smartphone market four years hence, should we be surprised that two independent observers have independent views?
Cross my touchscreen with silver
Well, actually, that's the situation even when it comes to three months hence as both IDC and Gartner have this week released their future predictions for the development of the global smartphone OS market.
Interestingly, Gartner is the more aggressive of the two; at least in terms of predicting actual physical numbers for the end of 2010, 2011 and 2014 for each of the major OS types. IDC merely publicly provides comparative market share percentages.
As you can see below, I've combined the market share percentages from both for 2010 and 2014 to break out which platforms either company is bullish/bearish (positive/negative) about.
In terms of 2010, there's not massive divergence apart from Windows Mobile, which - to be fair - is hard to judge as its new Windows Phone 7 platform isn't launching until October 2010.
Still, a circa 50 percent difference in market share suggests a large window of vacuosity on the part of, at least, one set of beancounters.
When it comes to 2014, thoughts are also divergent, although consistent with the companies' 2010 views.
IDC is bullish on Symbian, RIM and massively so when it comes to Windows Mobile. In turn, Gartner is bullish about Android, iOS and others (in this context we're thinking MeeGo).
