Piper Jaffray, an investment banking firm that earned $7.4 million in net income last quarter, is betting on Android in a big way.  Today, Piper Jaffray predicted that Android’s market share will pass the 50 percent mark in the next five years.

Don’t look for the rise to the halfway mark to happen all at once.  The report explained, "We estimate Google will control 14.9% of the smartphone market through Android in 2010, growing to 23.2% in 2012."

Meanwhile, Apple’s market share is also supposed to increase, hitting 17.6 percent in 2012.

Here’s the key thing, though: according to Larry Dignan, Piper Jaffray stated, "Ultimately, we believe Android is likely to control over half of the smartphone market in the next five years. . . .  and we believe ultimately Apple’s smartphone market share tops out between 20-30% . . ."

That’s a strong endorsement of what Google’s doing in the mobile space.  It could be a sign that Apple’s in trouble, too, since the company’s surely tried to convince analysts of a brighter outlook.

Apple beat Google in one sense today, anyway, since its stock dropped just 0.37 percent while Google’s fell 1.25 percent.