Analysts at Informa Telecoms & Media are predicting that sales of phones using Google's Android operating system will outpace Apple's by 2012.

The analyst firm said in a review of the state of the mobile phone operating system market that open source will be key to the growth of mobile platforms, in terms of opening up users to new applications and keeping costs down for manufacturers.

"The smartphone segment is not as simple as it was a few years ago," said Gavin Byrne, research analyst at Informa.

"In 2008 there were almost 162 million smartphones sold, surpassing notebook sales for the first time. The decision to move the Symbian platform to open source is crucial in maintaining its leadership over Android, Linux and Microsoft."

Byrne pointed out that Symbian's market share has dropped from nearly two thirds a few years ago, to less than half today. This is primarily down to Nokia's poor performance in the sector, but the growth of competing platforms has been a factor.

Overall, the coming year will be a tough one for manufacturers, the analyst explained, and sales volumes are likely to drop by over 10 per cent in 2009.

"While demand in the mid tier will fall away during 2009, sales of new smartphones will grow by over 30 per cent to 211.2 million units, driven by innovative new devices and operator subsidies designed to promote mobile data consumption," said Byrne. "By 2013 almost four in every 10 handsets sold worldwide will be a smartphone."

These figures are attracting interest from non-traditional manufacturers keen to get into the market. Acer has already announced a smartphone model, and Dell is rumoured to be working on its own device.