Just five years after Google Inc.’s Android appeared on the market in 2008, IHS forecasts that cumulative global shipments of smartphones using the operating system since it was introduced will amount to more than 1 billion in 2013.
Worldwide annual unit shipments of Android phones will rise to 451 million in 2013, up from 357 million in 2012, according to an IHS iSuppli Wireless Communications Smartphone Report from information and analytics provider IHS (NYSE: IHS). These massive totals will mean that combined shipments for every year since the first smartphone using Android shipped in 2008 will reach 1.1 billion by the end of 2013, as presented in the figure below. In contrast, the No. 2 smartphone operating system, Apple Inc.’s iOS, will amount to 527 million in cumulative shipments in 2013 and won’t reach the 1 billion level until 2015.