And what does the latest data and forecasts from analysts and market researchers mean for app developers?

The mobile phone market is flooded with data. Four times a year there is a spike in market share estimates are released shortly after the quarterly results, while the intervening time trying to forecasts from analysts and surveys of market research companies, get to the bottom to changing market trends is filled.

July has been a particularly big month, with a series of studies, surveys and forecasts. Individually, they 're of varying interest and credibility, but there is some value together for app developers to train the data and poring over the likely impact. So that 's what we' \ ve done.

Global mobile shipments

IDC 's estimates for the worldwide shipment of mobile phones is a good start. The company says that units were 365.4m in the second quarter of 2011, a number that feature phones and smartphones shipped covers. That 's by 11.3% over the previous year from the 328.4m phones in the second IDC Quarter of 2010 thinks delivered, although below the 13.3% growth that analysts had expected.

IDC says that the sale of feature phones actually up 4% year on year in the last quarter: the first time it is done since the third quarter of 2009. The total growth is thus driven by strong sales of smartphones.

IDC refers to this as a "move", and is used by U.S. market research company Nielsen, which means that claims have been backed up in their home market more smartphones from March to May 2011, sold as feature phones. However, the transition is happening not just in major Western markets: IDC noted strong sales of low-cost Android smartphone in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

The company 's history of the five mobile phone maker Nokia shows still in first place with 88.5m units shipped, but with a market share of 33.8% in Q2 declined by 2010 to 24.2% in Q2 2011th This raises the specter of second-placed Samsung (70.2 million units / 19.2% market share) to overtake it in the near future.

Smartphone shipments

That 's for all phones, but many app developers are focusing purely on smartphones. There is no lack of estimates for this sector of the market in the second quarter of this year, and some hard data.

Starting with the latter, Apple sold 20.4m iPhones in Q2, overhauling Nokia, which sold 16.7m "smart devices" – the term it uses for smartphones. HTC has just announced that it sold 12.1m smartphones in Q2, while other companies revealing their smartphone figures include LG (5.4m), Sony Ericsson (5.3m), Motorola (4.1m).

Samsung and Research In Motion are a bit more awkward. In the former case, it's because Samsung declined to give exact figures for its smartphone sales in Q2, citing competitive fears. In RIM's case, the difficulty is that its financial year doesn't follow the calendar year, so in its fiscal quarter ending on 28 May, it shipped 13.2m BlackBerry smartphones. Analyst ABI Research has provided predictions for both, pegging Samsung's Q2 smartphone shipments at around 19m, and sticking with RIM's figure of 13.2m.

Divvying smartphone shipments from manufacturers is one thing, but what app developers are more interested in the operating system is divided. ABI Research believes Android took a 46.4% share of smartphone shipments in Q2, with 47m units, in IOS (20.4), Symbian (16.7 million) and BlackBerry (13.2 million).

Smartphone penetration

The above data applies to new shipments of smartphones, but there are other companies, has as many units of each OS in the wild. Nielsen has just published a handy chart tracking share among the OS smartphone owners with a contract in the U.S., for example.

It brings Android 's share was 39%, followed by IOS (28%), blackberry (20%) and then Windows Mobile and Windows Mobile combined with 9%. Android and Windows Mobile penetration is also on the manufacturer, which is useful broken.

comScore caused controversy in July 2011 with its own estimates for OS smartphone penetration in the UK, the IOS has followed a 27.1% market share of Android (26.7%) and Symbian (22.5%), with a BlackBerry with a distance proposed behind.

Research In Motion, complained publicly about these statistics, however, say that while comScore estimates it has 3.6 million BlackBerry users in the UK, the actual number just under 7m.

Smartphone apps and forecasts

What is the future then? Or at least the near future. Analyst Gartner has done its forecast for sales of smart phones to end users - be aware that these are purchased by mail, because it actually covers phones of people who populated, in contrast to one of the retailers.

It sees Android under a firm grip on the market this year will run until 2015, when Gartner believes, Google is just under half (48.8%) of all smartphones sold power. The company believes 467.7m smartphones sold in 2011 rose to 1.1 billion by 2015.

But the crucial point is that she thinks this will continue to be one of four horses (at least) market with Windows Mobile (19.5% in 2015), IOS (17.2%) and BlackBerry (11.1%) all with a healthy revenue basis for the next four years. Yes, it 's easy to scoff every company with the bold prediction for the next four years from a market that' s changed enormously in the last four years - Apple 's iPhone is four years old after all.

The obvious implication from these projections are estimates, as profit app developers. Canalys has some predictions on this front, claiming that direct revenue from the sale of applications, in-app app purchases and subscriptions $ 7.3 billion (€ 4.4 billion) in 2011 and rose to top $ 36.7 bn (? 22.3 billion) in 2015. These estimates do not include advertising revenue.

Strategy Analytics says that by the end of 2012, paid downloads is almost $ 2 billion per quarter to reach, to overtake with the Android Market Apple 's App Store for the volume of downloads (but not the revenue) by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, IDC has its own research to applications, albeit with figures for the number of downloads rather than revenue. He thinks that mobile app downloads will grow from 10.7 billion in 2010 to 182.7bn in 2015, offers social and able to contribute to a shift away from paid download sales over in-app purchases and advertising.

Tablet sales / forecasts

The last area where some frenetic number crunching in July, the tablet market, both in terms of what 's selling now, and what is in the rest of the year 2011 and beyond sold.

Strategy Analytics recently published its estimates for Q2 2011, claiming that Apple's iPad took a 61% share of tablet shipments with 9.3m units, with Android nabbing a 30.1% share with 4.6m. The company thinks 0.7m Windows-powered tablets edged RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook (0.5m) into fourth place in the tablet OS market.

Separately, forecasting, investment bank UBS, the iPad will take a 63% share of the tablet market in the year 2011 as a whole, with 37.9 million units, although it shares the market from manufacturers and operating system. The Samsung looks to second place with sales of 5m Asus (2.2), RIM (1.9 million) and Motorola (1.8 m) followed.

Informa Telecoms & Media also has his crystal ball overtime on plates, suggesting that iPad currently 75% of the market, but that this decrease to 39% in 2015, just before the Android 's 38% - thinks Informa 90m and 87m iPads Android tablets sold this year will pass with Android finally IOS in 2016.

Lies, damned lies and statistics? Quite possible: this can only provide a snapshot of what people think is happening in the market. Expect many of these predictions in the second half of the year, revised 2011, continue as the smartphone and tablet markets its dizzying development.