Analysts have predicted that sales of smartphones using the Google Android platform will increase over 900% in 2009. This prediction is being compared to a predicted growth for iPhone sales of less than 80% which suggests that Android-based handsets could be a major player in the smartphone market in the next few years.

This rapid growth is attributed to a number of factors including:

• Interest in Android phones from a variety of sources including operators, phone vendors, phone developers and consumers.
• Popularity of Google services including Google’s mobile search functions, cloud services and application support.
• The low cost of licensing for this platform.
• The appeal of Android’s open-source format. More and more people are interested in seeing mobile phones opened up.
• The appeal of recent Android updates. The recent “Cupcake” update brought a bunch of new features and functions to Android-based phones and there are already reports of an upcoming update to Cupcake (dubbed Donut) that’s supposed to be even better.
• The number of new Android-based handsets that are expected to reach the market before 2009 is over (such as the Samsung i7500). Sales of the first Android phones from T-mobile have been good but they’ve been limited because there are only a couple of handset options on this single carrier. Increased variety of handset styles and choice among carriers will naturally increase sales.
• General growth of smartphone market. It is predicted that the market will grow by 20% this year. Since Android is starting with a low user base, the overall industry growth could mean a high level of growth for this particular type of smartphone.

The predictions suggest that more than ten million Android-based handsets could be sold before the end of the year. There are many skeptics out there who say that it’s unlikely this will happen given that we’re almost halfway through 2009 already but analysts insist that this is the year for Google Android growth.