WP7 Predicted To Beat iPhone By 2015 377
WrongSizeGlass writes "InformationWeek is reporting that Windows Phone 7 will overtake Apple's iPhone by 2015 according to IDC. IDC predicts 2015 will bring: Android 45.4%, WP7 & WinMobile 20.9%, iOS 15.3%, RIM 13.7%, Symbian 0.2%, and 'Others' 4.6%. These numbers would move WP7 into 2nd place and leave iOS in 3rd place with a slightly smaller piece of the smart phone pie than they current hold (15.7%). The author of the InformationWeek story isn't buying IDC's forecast, because of WP7's anemic sales to date and Microsoft's recent stumbles with its first two updates. I have to wonder if WP7 will still be Microsoft's smartphone OS in 2015 or if they'll have moved to WP8."
IDC (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a ridiculous speculation by IDC. From this article [betanews.com]:
IDC also hugely underestimated Android growth (again), predicting 24.6 percent market share by 2014. But Android already exceeded the projection in 2010 -- just months after IDC's forecast.
Seems like they're pulling numbers out of a hat to me.
Re:I wonder something else (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure they will... they go in, they don't back out and admit it's a failure unless it's horribly obvious. I wager somewhere between Zune (extremely low) and Xbox (in the game, but not a huge winner) in popularity, probably more like the Zune being fourth after Android, iOS and RIM in some order. See, the people that have dumbphones aren't interested in smart phones, and for those that want smart phones - particuarly a new generation of teens - WP7 is never going to get cool. RIM holds the business market, iOS has Apple's cult following, Android is a bit jack-of-all-trades and WP7 is... nowhere in particular.
Re:Obligatory XKCD (Score:3, Interesting)
IDC tries to justify it by throwing the word "Nokia" around a lot, but honestly, Nokia will (at least IMHO) be lucky to remain in the smartphone business by 2015.
Nah, more likely Nokia will eventually dominate again. Either with a Windows phone or Android. You can bet on it. They make arguably the best hardware of any phone manufacturer and that won't change, they just need to get their OS/software act together.
There is a chance that phones running Windows will at least be able to compete. Look at what Microsoft has done with the Xbox. If that fails Nokia can always fall back and release an Android phone which no doubt would quickly spring them back as the top dog.
I mean their main competitor is HTC with its Chinese designed and built junk^H^H^H^Hhardware.
Fallacy of 'unstoppable' Microsoft (Score:4, Interesting)
Every damn time that MS makes any significant move in a market they do not currently dominate, I am bombarded with people presuming the eventual *domination* of MS (whether they like it or not) to the exclusion of all others. MS has really only done that *twice*, desktop OS and Office suite, and *that's it*. They have not 'done it' in search and servers. They came closer in game consoles, closer than either search or server space, but they have not acheived near-monopoly status anywhere else or even become #1 in any of these markets.
MS is simply not the beast it used to be and/or the competitive landscape is a bit more competent. In OS space the only viable competitor at the time dominance was established was Apple, which MS successfully outmaneuvered in volume by managing to get cloning companies going and getting hardware companies to destroy each others' margins to deliver more volume to MS. My opinion is the office market was lost by simple business and/or technical inadequacies depending on which company you are talking about. Apple has learned how to be price competitive if it *has* to, while at the same time successfully marketing themselves so they don't have to. Google is going much further than MS did in enabling 'cloning' whilst mostly keeping integration with Google services very much intact.
Re:Obligatory XKCD (Score:5, Interesting)
They make arguably the best hardware of any phone manufacturer
For the low end phones, that's true. I'm a Linux geek, and I'm in a love/hate relationship with my iPhone, but I purposefully didn't buy an n900 after seeing what a clunky, hugemongonormous piece of cheap plastic it was. If they had spent just 50 euro more per phone for a nice solid case and a thin form factor, I would have spent 100 euro more and been happily running UQM or Firefox on my phone.