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The good people of Gartner believe that, given a little bit of time, Android is going to become a big deal.  In fact, one high-ranking analyst recently predicted that it'll be the second-biggest operating system on the mobile market by 2012.

Matt Hamblen talked to Ken Dulaney, who's a vice president at Gartner, and wrote afterward, "While the Google-backed Android mobile operating system currently runs on less than 2% of all smartphones, Gartner Inc. predicts it will surge to 14% of the global smartphone market in 2012 . . ." 

Granted, 14 percent doesn't sound like a whole lot.  But according to Dulaney's forecast, that'll be enough to put Android ahead of the iPhone OS, the BlackBerry OS, and Windows Mobile.  Plus, even the market leader - Symbian - won't have a huge share, with Dulaney calculating that it'll control just 39 percent of the market in three years' time.

Android's been on something of a roll in the past couple of days.  First came an announcement about a partnership with Verizon.  Then the mobile operating system (and its bright future) became the subject of a session at SMX East.

Google's no doubt hoping that all of this will lead to the Gartner prediction coming true, and may have its sights set even higher.