If you seek a stark picture of the smartphone landscape, look no further than this graph (above) released by Asymco analyst Horace Dediu. Never mind the RIMs and the Nokia’s, the battle is down to two players: Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. The two platforms, each around two years, collectively have 50.2 percent of the market.
“The conquerors came with new business models and a focus on computing not telephony,” Dediu writes Tuesday. As a result the two companies have led “the most competitive technology market on the planet.”
Android’s sheer presence allowed the smartphone market to grow at a faster pace, had Google not entered the fray. The Mountain View, Calif. Internet giant entered at a time when Apple was pumping out iPhones as fast as possible and RIM was targeting other markets. The analyst is betting however, there is still room for competitors, pointing to Windows Phone, webOS, and others.
“The question remains whether [there is still room] for new entrants or whether the platforms we see today are the last we’ll ever see in mobile computing,” asks Dediu.
