Analysts: 30% of Android phones in 2015 won't access Google services

According to a new report from CCS Insight, the dramatic and continued growth of the Android smartphone operating system may not be the boon to Android developer Google that some may have expected.

According to the firm, fully one in four Android phones don't currently access Google services like Maps, Gmail and the Google Play app store -- and that number will likely grow in the future.

"Android's dominance will increasingly fail to translate to Google dominance," the firm wrote in a wide-ranging report on the smartphone market. "The proliferation of forked variants of Android and the Chinese government's blocking of Google search in China is producing a growing proportion of Android devices that pose a challenge for Google's open-source Android model. Such devices provide Google with little or no revenue or data and provide a platform for services from Google's competitors. We estimate this could increase to over 30 percent in 2015. It also raises a question about how Google will control Android in the future as policing the platform through access to Google services will prove increasingly ineffective."