In 2011, Gartner made this hilarious prediction about the iPhone
It's 2015, which means that every analyst that said "By 2015...." in the past decade needs a fact check. Let's start with this delicious little nugget from the soothsayers at Gartner, shall we? According to Gartner's 2011 report, which aimed to forecast the next four years of the smartphone market, the following is supposed to be true as of today:
Android will be the #1 mobile operating system. - True. Congrats.
Android will command a 48.8% market share. - False, 84.4%. Not even close, really.
iOS will hold a 17.2% share of the market. - False, 11.7%. Closer-ish?
Research In Motion (BlackBerry) will hold 11.1% of the market. - False, 0.5%. Research In Motion doesn't even officially exist anymore, so that's another mark against them. This one might be the most outlandish of all, in hindsight.
And this one is my favorite:
Microsoft will the be #2 smartphone maker thanks to its Nokia deal, with 19.5% of the market, beating iPhone. - False, 2.9%. Nowhere near Apple.
The only thing Gartner's analysts had correct was that Android would have a comfortable lead in overall smartphone market share, and even that prediction was wildly out of whack. It's remarkable that a research firm can be this wrong and yet still be relied upon for their analysis.
Note: The data used for comparison comes from the Q3 2014 figures by IDC, so the numbers may be somewhat different today, but certainly not enough to hold any of these false predictions remotely true.
Big hat-tip to Terence! Thanks!
