When IDC predicted last week that Microsoft’s struggling Windows Phone platform would catapult to fame and fortune and become the number two smart phone worldwide, behind Android but ahead of Apple’s iPhone, we all laughed. We laughed because it’s absurd, because we see how Microsoft is mishandling the platform, and because it’s inconceivable that Apple won’t move aggressively to stop this from happening.
Now, however, Gartner has released its own findings for future smart phone growth. And it agrees with IDC: Windows Phone will be the number two smart phone platform in the world by 2015, behind Android but ahead of Apple’s iPhone. What the … WHAT?
Now, the Gartner report is really focused on Android, which it says will “command nearly half of worldwide smartphone operating system market by year-end 2012.” But from the perspective of a Windows Phone fan, it is of course Gartner’s predictions about this platform that are, perhaps, all the more important:
Gartner predicts that Nokia will push Windows Phone well into the mid-tier of its portfolio by the end of 2012, driving the platform to be the third largest in the worldwide ranking by 2013. Gartner has revised its forecast of Windows Phone’s market share upward, solely by virtue of Microsoft’s alliance with Nokia. Although this is an honorable performance it is considerably less than what Symbian had achieve [sic] in the past underlying the upward battle that Nokia has to face.
According to the numbers, Windows Phone, which today has sold fewer than 3 million phones worldwide, will somehow (well, not “somehow,” via its partnership with Nokia) account for almost 20 percent of the market in 2015 … or 216 million units.
Mull over that figure for a moment. 216 million units.
That year, Android will be number one with 49 percent of the market (540 million units), Gartner says, and iPhone will be number three with 17.2 percent (190 million units).
Well, there you go. :)
Well, that’s good… Microsoft could certainly (as always) do better. Time to get aggressive Microsoft and put these predictions to shame (as in being #1)!
Sadly, that doesn’t seem very likely.
You should have asked what the hell IDC & Gartner are smoking? Whatever it is, I’d like to know. It must be some really good stuff to get stoned on, because I think this “prediction” is absolutely full of horsecrap. I still say that I will not recommend/ aka: do not purchase on Windows Phone.
We might as well admit it. Windows Phone rocks!! ;)
Paul, there’s nothing laughable about these forecasts. If you take the number of commodity phones powered by “platform” OSes like Android or Symbian or what not, and divide by the number of handset models available, you’ll see average performance across the board, which is about the same as what you see in WP7′s case. In other words, if you put WP7 on 170 devices in 170 countries, you’ll see about the same number of units sold as you see with Android, give or take 10%. Actually, Symbian is a proof of that. Nobody likes it, it has a horrible UI and what not, and still sells. All that matters now is putting WP7 on devices and pushing them on every store shelf available. Nokia has a problem with Symbian because they can’t afford the R&D costs, not because their phones don’t sell.
I disagree. This is a ludicrous notion. Symbian, by Nokia’s own admission, is falling through the floor. I find it hard to believe that even a small portion of Symbian users would automatically latch on to Windows Phone because of the Nokia brand. Furthermore, it’s even more likely that these sales will mostly be future, low-end, pseudo-WP devices that are borderline feature phones. I wouldn’t get too excited by this.
You are free to disagree all you want, but that’s what numbers are saying. Android doesn’t sell any better than WP7 if you account for distribution differences. Both platforms are undiffirentiated middleware as far as consumers are concerned.
Also, the problem with updates is overblown. All WP7 devices (maybe apart from AT&T Focus) will get NoDo in about the same time or faster than Nexus 1 got 2.3, and that’s considered fast by industry standards.
That’s what … what numbers? These are predictions, not facts. Obviously, we’ll just see what happens.
Take any numbers you like. Your 3 million, for example. That’s 600K phones per month. Or 60K per month per phone. In half the US and a small part of the world. Multiply the number of phones by 17 to match Android’s variety (they have 170 according to Schmidt), add China e.a., cheap handsets, a couple of SGS level hits, all carriers, visible variety at each carrier, and you’ll see that there’s no difference between WP7 and Android in terms of sales per handset. Don’t get carried away by large numbers. People buy phones, not platforms. If there’s lots of phones and they are everywhere, they will sell. Sure, you need to have the features, design, what not, all these qualifiers need to be in place. Both IDC and Gartner assume they will be there. That’s not an unrealistic assumption. Apart from that, both firms assume that the market will grow, and that the share of WP7 devices in distribution will grow because Nokia will make handsets. Further, they assume that they’ll perform as average smartphones. That’s how they get the numbers. If anything, they are quite cautious.
Now, there’s a big BUT. I’m not sure how many WP7 models will be out there and when. But that’s the only thing that matters for the platform market share.
I didn’t laughed. And still think this is possible. The iPhone is only one product, one size, one style, one or two colors, one hardware brand . It’s impossible to surpass a magic (!) market share number with that.
On the other hand Symbian is dead, Android is powerful and changed fast but has problems that are very fundamental (fragmentation, software quality, developer concerns).
Microsoft does some mistakes now and I’m sure the delays are also Nokia-related because they don’t want to make platform decisions that they can’t change later. But the Windows Phone platform has everything it needs: diversity without a lot of fragmentation, awesome services with hundreds of million users worldwide, the OS software quality is right, the developers are happy.
So, yeah world domination is possible once again ;)
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If it takes 4 (or more) months to get an update out to less than 3 million users, how long will it take to get an update out to 216 million users?
If you can believe it, Paul, a sales guy actually recommended a Windows Phone over an Android phone for my wife the other day. I almost fell over.
I’m not a phone salesman, but I frequently recommend WP7 over Android, especially to less tech-savvy people. The core-experience of using the phone is better than Android, much simpler and less confusing, and they won’t miss the extra functionality that Android provides.
Pushing the update has nothing to do with the number of users, it has to do with the number of carriers standing in the way. I really hope that Microsoft addresses this problem in the future. However, the update situation is still better than Android, where neither the carriers nor the handset makers have any interest in providing updates for phones more than 6 months old.
I recommend WP7 as well. I love mine. When I bought mine though, two sales guys thought I was crazy for wanting a WP7 over Android. Even as I was paying for it, they were trying to get me to buy an Android and not the WP7.
In citing Nokia as the reason for WP7′s future success, I think these analysts are missing the point. Right now, there are legitimate reasons for people to avoid the platform, e.g. lack of multitasking, support for only one calendar… For each person, there may be one feature they need, which WP7 doesn’t support. With the next major update, a lot of those show-stoppers will presumably be going away.
This time next year, WP7 will probably have reached feature-parity with iPhone. That’s when the sales will really take off – when you can actually say, “this basically does everything the iPhone can do, but better.” Combined with the expectation that it will be available on a variety of handsets, from a variety of carriers, at a variety of price-points, it’s hard to see WP7 not pulling ahead.
I thought wp7 will be the no.1 by 2015???? Well what ever it is, I hope they continue to improve the os, and take control of the updates.
Microsoft probably shelled some cash on Gartner as well (along with IDC).
THis is really bad and easy esacpe from the fact! Aditya! … Any report which comes against rthe Apple of Linux or etc etc looser, they start making first statement as “CASH FED”
I wondered when you were going to comment on that. I read some of the reports a couple of days ago. It’s good to see Gartner reporting it also.
Not sure they got the Android part right, or the timing, but who knows. What I do know is the with the Nokia exclusive deal, we’re going to see a huge number of developers flock to the platform and thus an exponential growth of applications.
I’m still waiting on my udpate to my Samsung Focus though. Also why won’t the Zune software install easily on Windows Server 2008? It’s a pain to upgrade the software on Server.
I’m too lazy to look it up but I’m pretty sure Gartner were the same ones who predicted just before WPH7 came out that it was going to be a non OS failure.
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Got the Sprint HTC Arrive last Saturday, pretty sweet device, goes great with Zune Pass. Whatever WP7 lacks in features it makes up in polish.
I totally belive this will happen because the hardware requirements for wp7 are becoming easier to meet and thus bringing the OS to the masses. People living in the US may think less of nokia because it isn’t a factor here. However the US has a mere 300 million people. Some provinces in asia have more people than that and nokia is as strong a brand as apple is in the US. No, people won’t just buy a nokia phone because it has nokia, but they will buy a nokia phone if it is better than their prior nokia phone. This is where wp7 comes in. It makes nokia phones better. I certainly think it brings nokia phones on par with android and iphone and jokes aside, google and apple aren’t moving all that fast any more giving plenty of time for microsoft to catch up with the things wp7 doesn’t yet do.
combine the effect of windows phone with the huge nokia brand, and you can certainly see apple failing overseas just as they have today. Let’s not forget, apple is an expensive brand. They need to be because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to put out products with expensive hardware and even more expensive margins. Apple as a company is engineered to boom, bust, and decline in cycles, just as they have, just as they will.
I do not for a second doubt android will be #1, but I also do not think they will ever reach more than half the market. With apple keping the top tier, and microsoft stealing the wind out of android’s sails, the phone market will look a lot like the browser market, only swap google with IE in a slow declining trend, and apple stuck like safary is being maintained by loyalists.
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