Android to own 49% of smartphone market by end of 2012

Research firm Gartner has released its latest stats for the smartphone market and the company thinks that Android is heading towards a very dominant position in the next year or so. According to the firm Android will own 49% of the smartphone market by 2012. The growth of Android is very impressive over the last few years.

Other tidbits offered up in the report include that Gartner predicts 468 million smartphones will ship this year, which is an increase of 57.7% from the number shipped in 2010. Gartner also pegs the sales of open source handsets to hit a billion by 2015 and to make up 47% of all mobile phone sales.

In 2010, Android had 22.7% of the smartphone market and by 2012 49.2% of the market is predicted for more than double what the OS had in 2010. At the same time, Symbian will drop from 37.6% of the market in 2010 to a mere 5.2% of the market in 2012.

[via Android Community]