The Android-based G1 handset now shares with the iPhone the status of a goal-setter for mobile phones, researcher Gartner said Thursday.
“You won’t beat Apple in the short term, but being worse than both Apple and Android is likely to end in disaster,” Gartner analysts Roberta Cozza and Carolina Milanesi write.
The two said the Android-based G1 will probably ship between 600,000 to 700,000 devices this year and comprise 10 percent of smartphone sales by 2011.
HTC, the Taiwan company that makes the G1 for T-Mobile, said between 400,000 and 500,000 G1s will sell during the fiscal fourth quarter which ended Sept. 30. The hardware company said it will make 2 million G1s for T-Mobile.
Gartner said cell phone makers should concentrate their efforts on either the Android or Symbian platforms. In 2009, other cell phone companies, including Samsung and LG, will join T-Mobile’s adoption of Google’s open Android software.
Despite the likelihood that T-Mobile will sell many G1s, the carrier will not be able to attain the same success as the iPhone.
“The device is not as iconic as the iPhone. And without the power of Apple’s PR and marketing hype, we believe demand for the G1 will be much lower than for the iPhone,” the report states.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
4 responses to “Gartner: Android ‘Won’t Beat Apple’ In Short Term”
key words… short term?
It’s plain ugly.