Here are your Apple rumors and news items for Friday:
iPhone Drop: Research firm IDC expects the smartphone market to grow 55% by 2015 and forecasts 472 million phones will be sold that year. Google‘s (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android operating system, featured in phones made by Motorola (NYSE:MMI), HTC, and others, currently controls a nearly 39% share of the market, and IDC expects it to maintain that lead with close to a 44% share in 2015. It also expects Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) share to decline over that same period; the iPhone’s platform accounts for just about 18% of the market in 2011 — IDC expects that to fall below 17% by 2015. Research In Motion (NASDAQ:RIMM) will see a comparable fall, to about 13% from 14%. However, IDC anticipates that Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) who will grow the most by 2015. Though the Windows operating system accounts for less than 4% of the market now, IDC expects it to control more than 20% of the market by 2015, second only to Google. Microsoft’s gains will come thanks to its new partnership with Nokia (NYSE:NOK), whose own smartphone operating system Symbian will be replaced in the competitive landscape by Windows Phone 7.The details of IDC’s report can be seen at Electronista.
Summer Threat: A Friday report at DigiTimes (via Apple Insider) suggests that an Android-powered smartphone might be the star of the mobile industry during the summer of 2011. HTC is reportedly set to challenge Apple as the best-selling smartphone manufacturer in the U.S. in this year’s third quarter. That’s because Apple isn’t introducing a new iPhone model as it typically does during that timeframe. But there’s also the growing popularity of HTC’s Thunderbolt smartphone, the Android device that is compatible with both AT&T (NYSE:T) and Verizon’s (NYSE:VZ) 4G networks. Although it hasn’t yet outsold the iPhone on either of those networks, it is the best-selling Android phone. The success of HTC’s other handsets on Sprint (NYSE:S) and T-Mobile networks are the final key in giving the Taiwanese manufacturer a leg up over Apple this summer.
iCloud Queue: A Thursday report in The Telegraph said that though Apple’s new iCloud service will be open for business in the U.K. this fall, its iTunes-based music services won’t be available there until the first quarter of 2012. A spokesman for the Performing Right Society, a U.K.-based organization representing both musicians and music publishers, said that Apple is still at a “very early stage” in securing contracts with major U.K. record labels. As Mac Rumors points out, the original iTunes store experienced a similar international delay when it opened. iTunes debuted in the U.S. in 2003, but it didn’t reach Europe until June 2004.
As of this writing, Anthony John Agnello did not own a position in any of the stocks named here. Follow him on Twitter at @ajohnagnello and become a fan of InvestorPlace on Facebook.
