NEW DELHI: Nokia is all set to sweep the mobile marketplace with a slew of models. A company official said that Nokia plans to launch as many as 40 mobile phones in 2011. Of these 12 will reportedly be in the smartphone category.
Reasearch firm International Data Corp (IDC) recently forecast the worldwide smartphone market to grow nearly 50 per cent this year and Google’s Android to emerge as the leading operating system.
IDC said that smartphone vendors are expected to ship more than 450 million smartphones in 2011 compared to 303.4 million last year.
The research firm said that Android is expected to surpass Nokia’s Symbian in 2011 and become the leading smartphone platform.
“Android is poised to take over as the leading smartphone operating system in 2011 after racing into the number two position in 2010,” said IDC senior research analyst Ramon Llamas.
IDC also predicted strong growth for Microsoft’s Windows Phone platform which has been losing market share but was recently adopted by Finland’s Nokia.
“Up until the launch of Windows Phone 7 last year, Microsoft has steadily lost market share while other operating systems have brought forth new and appealing experiences,” Llamas said.
“The new alliance brings together Nokia’s hardware capabilities and Windows Phone’s differentiated platform,” he said.
“We expect the first devices to launch in 2012,” Llamas said. “By 2015, IDC expects Windows Phone to be number two operating system worldwide behind Android.”