Google and Apple Might Have 98% Market Share This Year

Equity analyst Trip Chowdhry of Global  Equities Research predicts that Google and Apple will capture 98 percent of the worldwide mobile market by the end of 2012. As for who is in third place, Chowdhry is blunt: "There will not be any third spot left."

The forecast is not a "wild" prediction, by any means. IDC's  figures for worldwide smart phone unit sales and market share in the second quarter of 2012 show that Android had 68.1 percent share, while iOS (Apple Inc.’s iPhone) had 16.9 percent share, for a total of 85 percent share between the two firms.

BlackBerry (Research in Motion Ltd.) had 4.8 percent share. Symbian (mostly used by Nokia Corp.) had 4.4 percent share. 

Windows had 3.5 percent share while Linux had 2.3 percent share.