"Android adoption is about to explode," said Eric Schmidt during Google's third quarter earnings call last week. Although we could not expect less from Google’s CEO, this statement is now shared by analysts.

Gartner recently unofficially announced its forecast for the smartphone operating system market in 2012. Based on sales of 525 million smartphones, Symbian would still come first with 196.5 million devices sold and 37.4% market share, but it should be followed by Android with 94.5 million devices and 18% share.

Followers are expected to be BlackBerry (73 million sold, 13.9%) and the iPhone (71.5 million sold; 13.6% share), then Windows Mobile (47.7 million sold and 9% share). Smaller operating systems on the market will be Maemo (23.5 million sold, 4.5% share), Linux (generally) with 11 million and 2.1% share as well as Palm’s WebOS (7.6 million sold, 1.4% share).

Microsoft #2?
Nevertheless this view is not supported by every analyst on the market today. Indeed, Tina Teng, a senior wireless communications analyst with iSuppli still believes that Microsoft will retake its second position by 2012. The market research company expects that “In 2013, 67.9 million smart phones will use the Windows Mobile operating system, up from 27.7 million in 2009. This will give Windows Mobile a 15.3 percent share of the global market in 2013, second only to the Symbian operating system”.

However, to make this happen Microsoft will have to deliver quicky an Android/iPhone grade OS, both powerful and user-friendly.