The International Data Corporation (IDC) has unveiled a somewhat shocking press release stating that, according to their predictions, the Windows Phone 7 platform will take the #2 spot from iOS in world smartphone popularity sometime around 2015.
Currently the IDC’s stats put Android at 38.9% of market share with iOS trailing with 18.2% and Windows Phone 7 with a measly 3.8%. You’ll note that Symbian is up there too, but many of their devices are feature phones (i.e. not smartphones) and Symbian is being replaced by WP7 on many upcoming Nokia devices in the near future.
As you can see in the provided table not only is Apple expected to fall to 16.9% of the world market, but Windows Phone is set to go as high as 20.3%.
Quite usefully the IDC has provided in the next column the annual growth rate for each platform and you’ll note that 20.3% would mean a whopping 82.3% growth rate for WP7 compared to 17.9% for iOS and 23.7% for Android.
While shocking, this is definitely good news for the Consumer and Industry smartphone markets. Android has been streaming ahead of iOS in recent months due mostly to its clear advantage in device support. Where Apple has just its iPhone line when it comes to iOS smartphone support (no, we don’t count the iPod Touch or iPad as smartphones) Android boasts dozens of manufacturers each with their own eclectic range of handsets. Basically, as far as multi-manufacturer mobile operating systems go Android hasn’t had any real competition.
But now Microsoft is apparently set to change all of that with its new Mango update. The update, which brings many features that were missing to the platform as well as more than a few fixes, when coupled with Nokia’s new direction towards making WP7 devices appears to be exactly what Microsoft needed to finally get that piece of smartphone market share they’ve always wanted.
However the market ends up progressing we hope that there’s at least a sliver of truth in this IDC press release. As we’ve said before, WP7 is a solid foundation on which a fantastic OS could be built. With some tweaks and useful additions we can definitely see Windows Phone one day rivalling the Android and iOS platforms. We hope the Mango update is their first step towards this ultimate goal but however they end up getting there another major competitor in the smartphone market is never a bad thing.
More competition between companies leads to more choices for the consumers. We’re all about choice here at WhistleOut so we’d consider that a win. Whatever your preference; iOS, Android, WP7 or any other kind of device we’re always happy to see quality products being offered by the major labels. If the IDC thinks that Microsoft is headed in that direction sometime soon then that’s a good news story in our books.
Source IDC via TechnoBuffalo
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