Windows Phone to be No. 2 by 2015

March 29, 2011 5:08 PM
Mikko Torikka

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July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Thanks to a partnership with Nokia, Windows Phone 7 will be the number two smartphone operating system worldwide by 2015, predicts market research company IDC.

“Up until the launch of Windows Phone 7 last year, Microsoft has steadily lost market share while other operating systems have brought forth new and appealing experiences”, said Ramon Llamas, senior research analyst with IDC’s Mobile Devices Technology and Trends team. “The new alliance brings together Nokia’s hardware capabilities and Windows Phone’s differentiated platform.

For IDC’s prediction to come true, nearly everyone currently using Nokia’s Symbian smartphones will have to make the switch to Windows smartphones; the first Nokia-Windows phones will be out in 2012.

The competition will be fierce. New Android phones are being released regularly and the iPhone 5 is rumored to come out later this year. Google’s Android operating system will grab a hold of the number 1 spot this year, and its market share will grow to 45.4 percent in 2015 from 39.5 in 2011, according to IDC. Apple’s iPhone’s market share will be 15.7 percent at the end of this year and will stay around 15 percent also in 2015.

The worldwide smartphone market is expected to grow 49.2% in 2011 as more consumers and enterprise users turn in their feature phones for smartphones with more advanced features. Smartphone vendors will ship more than 450 million smartphones in 2011 compared to the 303.4 million units in 2010, IDC predicts. The smartphone market will grow more than four times faster than the overall mobile phone market.

Operating System	2011 Market Share	2015 Market Share
Android	39.5%	45.4%
BlackBerry	14.9%	13.7%
iOS	15.7%	15.3%
Symbian	20.9%	0.2%
Windows Phone 7	5.5%	20.9%
Others	3.5%	4.6%

http://www.advancedwebads.com/sc/164 Randy Addison

how can they be so sure about it? Well, it is possible since the phones look really sleek and innovative in a way. But my predictions would be the Windows phone will be 3rd place.
http://listeningtoreason.com wanorris

1. They *can't* be sure. IDC's job is to provide the best prediction they can given incomplete information. If they turn out to be way off base, it certainly won't be the first time.2. The shift in market share above implies that most or all of Microsoft's share gains will be existing Nokia users. This implies that not only will they not be #2 in the US market, but they are likely to be in 4th place, behind Android, iOS, and Blackberry.3. This prediction makes the dangerous assumption that the overwhelming majority of the Nokia Symbian users will become Nokia WinPhone users, instead of shifting to the next generation of affordable Android phones. I'm very suspicious of this assumption.4. Their prediction for Blackberry's level of attrition seems surprisingly optimistic. I strongly suspect that Blackberry will lose more share to iOS and Android between now and 2015.Still, even if WinPhone's share works out to 12-14% and the OS is in 3rd, ahead of Blackberry but behind iOS, that's still a huge positive development for Microsoft compared to the pre-Nokia outlook. Their real key will be to try to find a way to build some kind of traction in the U.S.
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[...] market share through lower-cost phones. And even Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) Windows Phone 7 is expected to have the second-largest smartphone market share in 2015, thanks to Microsoft’s partnership [...]