Windows Phone to overtake Android by 2015 claims Pyramid Research

Also thinks smartphones will account for 53 per cent of total handset sales that year.

Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 platform has been subject to continual speculation about poor handset sales in recent months, but one analyst thinks the company is set for big success in the coming years.

Pyramid Research's latest smartphone forecasts report includes the prediction that by 2015, Windows Phone will overtake Google's Android OS to become the most popular smartphone OS.

More generally, Pyramid thinks that 1.46 billion handsets will be sold to end users (as opposed to merely shipped) in 2011, with 27% of them being smartphones - 394.2 million.

However, in 2015, Pyramid thinks smartphones will account for 53% of all handset sales, although it cites 'demand for inexpensive Android models' as one of the key factors, rather than the surge in Windows Phone sales.

Indeed, the company sees a big demand for these phones from manufacturers like ZTE and Huawei as driving market growth even in the richer European, Asian and North American markets this year.