The last couple of years have been very good for smartphones; if you go by the numbers, the growth in smartphones sales as a percentage of overall handset sales has been phenomenal. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, and many would attribute this surge greatly to the Apple iPhone (a runaway success) and the other variants. These variants include RIM’s (Research in motion) Blackberry and Nokia’s E series (the E71 has been particularly popular of the lot) running the Symbian platform.  Windows mobile also hasn’t done too badly despite losing some ground in Q3 2009 (refer to the illustration).

This article isn’t about RIM, Symbian or the iPhone; it’s about the dark horse that’s giving others (or at least some of them) a nightmare.  I’m talking of the Google Android, not a phone, but a platform that’s steadily gaining ground and has already gained an enviable foothold in 2009. If you aren’t familiar, read my previous articles on Google Android.

In 2009 alone, the global sales of Android based phones exceeded 6.5 million. The Motorola Droid, Motorola’s first phone based on the Android platform alone managed to ramp up more than a 1 million phones, in just 2 months.  From a nearly non-existent presence in 2008, the sales of Google Android phones have notched up 4 percentage of the market share for smartphones in just a year’s time (Refer to the illustration below).

By some estimates, Android based phones are expected to sell more than 15 million phones in 2010, more than 100% year-on-year!

So what’s behind this stellar performance? And why are consumers moving to this new platform?

For the consumers, Android is a fresh breath of air, with a lot of features and customisations available and the different handset options available from an assortment of handset manufacturers like HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson (the Experia X10), Acer and more to follow!.
And then there is the Google Nexus One. For those who came in late, the Nexus One is Google’s own branded phone with an impressive design and specs that will give the Apple iPhone a run for its money. Google Nexus One is manufactured by Taiwan’s HTC Corporation and became available early this year.

The battle for dominance in the smartphones segment will also greatly depend on the number of applications available, and Android is doing great here too. Android offers a growing software market place, which currently hosts about 20,000 applications, a number that is expected to grow to 70,000 by 2010.

With the growing consumer craze, expect more manufacturers with their legacy platform to follow suit. For the manufacturers, Google Android also offers the cost advantage of using a stable and popular open source platform.

For years, the smartphone segment was dominated by phones that were bulky, unattractive and expensive.  Like I said earlier, Apple set the precedent for uber phones by making them chic, intuitive and now Google Android is opening it up to the masses and dawning in a new era for smartphones.