Market research firm IDC predicts that the smartphone market will grow 49.2% in 2011, due to an increasing number of users who will replace feature phones with smartphones.

The report goes hand in hand with a recent study, also by IDC, which predicts that the number of mobile app downloads will grow from 10.9 billion in 2010 to 76.9 billion in 2014.

While the growth of the smartphone market is fairly easy to predict, IDC also makes predictions about the market share of smartphone platforms in 2015, and we're far more skeptical about those. Android, IDC predicts, will have 45.4% market share by that time, while BlackBerry will be at 13.7% and iOS at 15.3%.

Symbian, recently dropped from Nokia's long-term plans, is predicted to drop to 0.2%, and Windows Phone 7 is predicted to grab an impressive 20.9% market share, which would propel it into second place by a large margin. It's definitely possible, but even though Microsoft's partnership with Nokia is a strong foundation for success, we can easily see bumps in the road (such as Nokia's integration of WP7 going slower than planned) that could impede such stellar growth for WP7.

What do you think about these predictions by IDC? Can Windows Phone 7 reach second place on the market by 2015? Please, share your opinions in the comments.







[via IDC]