WP7 Predicted To Beat iPhone By 2015

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."

Comments

Obligatory XKCD

[taktoa]

http://xkcd.com/605/

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[Penguinisto]

No kidding.

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.

There's something else that screams "bullshit!" at IDC's predictions: while next quarter's marketshare stats (e.g. Canalys, ComScore, etc) may say differently, Microsoft's share of the mobile market is still dropping like mad. Even though WinMo 6.5 still has some mass to blow off, one would think that nearly 6 months of WP 7 would have at least slowed down the fall a little bit.

The final elephant in an already heavily pachyderm-populated room is Microsoft's utter silence on sales numbers. They almost always trumpet and trot out numbers, even if it's just channel-related. We all heard the big, bad 'two millionz0rz since launch!!!111' figure back in January, even though those were only channel shipments. Now, Microsoft's marketing department has nothing but the sound of crickets when it comes to mobile licensing sales (or even shipments).

Taken all together, it spells a whole lot of potential fail, and IDC needs to do a hell of a lot more than shout Nokia's name, like it were some sort of talisman that defies all logic.

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[Relayman]

Just find out who paid for the study and you will know everything.

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[PopeRatzo]

No kidding.

Who else read this headline in their RSS feed and had the first thought of "aw jeez, this is gonna be a bloodbath in the comments section"?

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[Ant P.]

http://dilbert.com/fast/2009-12-09/

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[cptdondo]

It also ignores Nokia's steady market drop. If you take the intersection of WP7 market trends and Nokia's market trends, they will intersect somewhere near 0 in about 2013.

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[Culture20]

Nokia will (at least IMHO) be lucky to remain in the smartphone business by 2015.

Nokia will be lucky to remain in the smartphone business by Qt4 2013. They're betting on WP7 with no safety net.

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[Culture20]

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.

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Maybe they were but not anymore.

The N8's a decent piece of hardware, don't get me wrong, but, they lost the lead. The N8 is the first Nokia phone to have Multitouch. In 2010. Late 2010 at that, after massive delays.

Nokia has no product vision for the future. Add to that the lag of having to actually release WP7 phones. They're sitting ducks.

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[PopeRatzo]

Actually, my first thought was "nice, something to entertain myself while compiling."

You mean compiling isn't entertaining enough?

Are you sure you're in the right place?

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[hairyfeet]

Well to be fair, and while personally I think it will be Android/iOS neck and neck with WP7 or WebOS third, the key to whether or not MSFT can pull this off will be bundle deals. if MSFT gets Nokia to put out a WinPhone with a kick ass GPU by holiday season AND manage to tie Halo in, like say having a Halo Phone Game that boosts your characters and earns achievements for the game at home? THEN they might be able to pull this off.

Because to be fair Windows 7 plays REAL nice with the X360. I've set up the Win 7/X360 combo for a couple of customers and it really is butt simple to make it a kick ass multimedia setup, so if they can "pull an Apple" and tie everything together, so say your WinPhone can watch anything you have at home by using the WinPC as a slingbox, while tying gaming between X360 and WinPhone together? Then yes I can see MSFT taking second place, especially if their successor to the X360 kicks ass.

But that is gonna be a hell of a big IF and will depend on the suits at MSFT not cocking things up. MSFT has a history of screwing the pooch and not "getting it", see Zune, Kin, Vista, etc, but the basic parts they need are there, the question is can they bundle them together in a smooth and easy to use package. While they do have a shot, and Android proves you can come along and change the game if you are in the right place with the right product, I frankly wouldn't bet the farm on it.

My personal prediction is thus: Android will burn enough folks with CCC (Cheapo Chinese Crap) that they won't be able to hold first, and Apple's traditionally high prices will make a nice opening for someone in the middle, but if HP can keep from screwing the pooch WebOS could be the one to take that slot, at the very least with their rep with businesses they could be the one to finish off RIM and take over the business phone market. So final call...Apple and Android, followed by either WebOS or WinPhone with Blackberry DOA.

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[mug funky]

and you'll find the stats flooded by that kristopeit fucker's thousands of userID's.

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[biglig2]

What do you sell to the people wanting iPhones? Android devices? Or do they leave and go to a store that stocks iPhones? This fascinates me, because I suspect it may be a significant distortion to the US smartphone but I can't figure out how big. If you manage to sell them on Android, then now that Verizon has iPhone and T-Mobile is shortly going to go away, you'd expect to see a drop. Except Android devices having lower ticket prices might keep them in the game. Or maybe the "normals" do something else we geeks can't understand...

(I'm assuming you're based in the US, of course, apologies in advance if I'm wrong, but since you're AC and won;t get notified of this reply my question is largely hypothetical anyhoo.)

Re:Obligatory XKCD

[Andy Dodd]

The closest to "Chinese piece of crap Android device" I've experienced, other than the noname Android tablets, has been my Huawei S7. It's not a piece of crap, but it definitely has its issues and is proving to be mostly unsupported by the manufacturer. (Docking connector but no dock, somewhat buggy firmware, GPL noncompliance for a while, etc.)

However, while I've seen a lot of reports of people returning S7s due to being unhappy with them, it didn't sour them on Android. Most of them were saying, "Ditch this and get a Galaxy Tab", not "Ditch this and get an iPad".

Nokia Sales

[Moderator]

"The new alliance brings together Nokia's hardware capabilities and Windows Phone's differentiated platform. We expect the first devices to launch in 2012. By 2015, IDC expects Windows Phone to be number 2 operating system worldwide behind Android."

Not so fast...the author seems to base WP7's success on the success of Nokia, which is uncertain at best.

Yes, Nokia sells more cellphones than most other cellphone manufacturers COMBINED...however, a large majority of those sales are S40 devices, simple dumbphones that can't do much more than call and receive texts, but have a week plus battery life.

Nokia has, since mid-February, doubled-back on their future strategy. First, it was WP7 ONLY...then they were going to continue to release Symbian and Meego, now, Symbian is dead as of 2010.

It sounds to me like Nokia has no clue what they are going to do. At best, their explanation for the smartphone market has been murky; at worst, they still haven't addressed how they are going to make up the marketshare currently held by 600 million S40 dumbphones. Mostly people who do not want a dataplan or a smartphone. WP7 will not sweep into the low-end and take that market share. It's like Ford giving up making Fords, and deciding that they will only make high-end Lincolns to suit everyone.

I said it before, Samsung seems to have figured this out. They will use Bada on the low end, and Android on the high end. In this case, I would take a lot away from WP7's percentage, and bump up the "Others" category significantly.

I wonder something else

[93 Escort Wagon]

I have to wonder if WP7 will still be Microsoft's smartphone OS in 2015 or if they'll have moved to WP8.

I have to wonder whether, in 2015, Microsoft will be in the phone software business at all.

Re:I wonder something else

[Kjella]

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:I wonder something else

[rsborg]

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.

Perhaps the GP comment

I have to wonder whether, in 2015, Microsoft will be in the phone software business at all.

is really more about questioning Microsoft's future, not just the future of Microsoft's phone business. Recently, they just killed Zune... not because they didn't want to stay in, but because they're tightening their belt. Microsoft is facing mounting pressure from the Googles, Apples and Facebooks of this world, who are hungry and execute well. It may come time at some point that they really are forced to focus on what they do best... business desktop software. This could mean the (forced) abandonment of WP software, Bing, etc.

Re:I wonder something else

[Daniel Phillips]

Nekrosoft?

Re:I wonder something else

[whoever57]

It may come time at some point that they really are forced to focus on what they do best... business desktop software. This could mean the (forced) abandonment of WP software, Bing, etc.

Microsoft can't afford to do this. In the past, Microsoft's success was enabled by owning the complete flow, from the proprietary exchange formats to the proprietary office document formats.

But now, the "must have" is the smartphone. Hence Microsoft is playing on the other foot -- the Office and Windows have to play nice with the smartphones. But if Office and Windows play nice with smartphones, then other tools can interact with Office and Wndows, dramatically reducing the value of Microsoft's proprietary format lock-in.

The personal computing landscape has shifted and Microsoft has yet to catch up -- and, indeed, may never catch up.

Re:I wonder something else

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

No, microsoft only won once: DOS. After that, they just used that marketshare alongside some really shady business practices to push windows as the #1 OS. After they became filthily rich, their strategy has been fairly simple ... they push OEM manufacturers to bundle windoze with new computers, so that average joe considers windoze part of the computer, the default, and doesn't even consider anything else, they keep certain missfeatures, bugs, and some awful design issues in order to keep the huge fix-windows industry alive (overcrowded IT departments, anti virus/malware/spyware/whateverware, and the shitload of motherfuckers that make a living out of charging joe six pack 50 bucks to remove all the crapware he installed while trying to download porn), sliding money under the table for some high-level managers at fortune 500 companies, etc, etc.

That's it. Everything m$ has done after that (that wasn't directly related to windows on x86) has failed.

Microsoft has never had any kind of success in any new market. This will not be an exception.

People is afraid to migrate, afraid to change, therefore they are still relevant in the x86 OSs business. Anything else is brand new and fair game for everyone, and m$ just can't compete on that, competition hasn't ever been one of microsoft's strongest points.

Re:I wonder something else

[Drishmung]

Microsoft is not known for strong initial offerings. The original IE was awful. The original Windows was unusable. They tend to stay in and fight, and sometimes win.

I find this statement telling. Because, a few (three?) years ago, I believe it would have been something like:

"They stay in and fight, and always win in the end."

Once, Microsoft was perceived as invincible. Once, if Microsoft entered your market you either tried to get them to buy you or else just gnawed your own leg off first (e.g. Novell and NetWare) because Resistance Is Useless.

Now, Microsoft is not perceived as invincible. The world has indeed changed...

Re:I wonder something else

[Crazy Taco]

Dumbphones will go the way of word processing machines and PDAs. There just won't be a reason to make them, even if many people are satisfied by them, because the smartphone can serve both markets.

I would wholeheartedly agree with you, except for one thing: battery life. Unless that gets fixed, dumb phones will never go away. Most dumb phone users like the fact that their batteries last a week, and smartphones cannot fill that void at this time, nor do they appear likely to any time in the next few years. I'm betting that dumb phones, albeit with more features and possibly even running a bare bones version of Android under the hood, will continue for the next few years.

Re:I wonder something else

[Rufty]

Word and Excel predate Windows. SQL server was from Sybase. And Exchange? Nope.

Re:I wonder something else

[yuna49]

Don't forget Outlook/Exchange. I still think the biggest draw for MS is making a phone that works seamlessly with Exchange. Word/Excel/PP is nice and all, but staying in sync with mail, calendars, etc., in the office while traveling is where MS will get the most leverage. From what I can tell Exchange is nearly ubiquitous in large and mid-sized enterprises. In terms of providing lock-in, it's more powerful these days than Office.

Re:I wonder something else

[Daniel Phillips]

Lower P/E actually means the company isn't over priced.

Not really. Low P/E normally means a company is not expected to grow quickly.

Re:I wonder something else

[Dynamoo]

First IBM seemed invincible with their mainframes.
Then DEC seemed invincible with their minicomputers.
Then Apple and Commodore seemed invincible with their microcomputers.
The IBM seemed invincible with THEIR microcomputer.
Then Microsoft seemed invincible with their operating system and applications.
Then Yahoo seemed invincible with their web portal.
Then Google seemed invincible with their search engine.
Then Myspace seemed invincible with their social networking site.
Then Apple seemed invincible with their smartphone.
Then Facebook seemed invincible with THEIR social networking site.

If one thing is certain, empires like this rise and fall. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Then in 2016 ....

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Then in the year 2016, this forecaster will return to Earth from whatever planet he is in, once what he is smoking wears off.

IDC

[Dan East]

This is a ridiculous speculation by IDC. From this article:

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:IDC

[Anonymous Coward]

"Seems like they're pulling numbers out of a hat to me."

I don't think so. I'm pretty sure they have to twist and lean to one side to reach the place where they're pulling their numbers from.

Re:IDC

[moonbender]

Why would they be storing them in their donkey? You're not making any sense.

Re:Is Informationweek owned by Microsoft?

[icebraining]

Uh, it's IDC who predicts that, not InformationWeek. The IW guy actually doubts the prediction.

Further, Microsoft has stumbled badly with the first two system updates for its smartphone platform. First by delaying it for nearly two months, and second by bungling the actual delivery of the updates. Things are not going so smoothly for Microsoft. Heck, WP7 champion Joe Belfiore actually wrote a public apology to its WP7 customers about the whole update debacle.

This is the platform IDC thinks is going to own 20.9% of the market in four years?

I say fiddlesticks.

We are predicting four years out?

[bigsexyjoe]

We are predicting four years out on a category of product that scarcely existed four years ago? And we say a product that has been out for six months should be in second place in four years? I am confident that the predictions are right, after all that website gives us three significant digits saying Windows 7 will have 20.9% of the market-share.

Re:inb4 shill

[homey of my owney]

Really... If ever a story reeked of being purchased. I guess we know where those "expert" house's crystal balls are made.

Re:Thats balmer's pipe dream

[sltd]

Mod grandparent down - that's goatse.

Excellent

[toadlife]

Also, see this.

Re:Ms Abandonment

[Jerry]

They abandon Kin six weeks after launch.

Re:Last Mover

[fwarren]

WTF Search?

With up around 70% of the market is Google. With Yahoo at less than 20% and Bing at less than 10%. Microsoft has bought themselves in as the search engine for Yahoo and are still less then 25% of the market. How exactly did they beat the dominate technology company in search?

 

Kinect Phone

[w0mprat]

As soon as Microsoft puts Kinect-like functionality in a phone or tablet, Android, iOS and others will have nothing to counter it. .

WP7 was a great attempt and was very slick and new which briefly made iOS and Android look old news at the time. But it was too little too late into a saturated smartphone market.

Kinect sold ten million in a few months - outselling all ipods iphones and ipads and being extremely impressive for any new technology release. But we're all still so obsessed over shiny smartphones that we're ignoring Microsoft's meteoric sucess with Kinect and failing to talk about the obvious next move from MS. Kinect is, quite frankly, is a real revolutionary change in interfaces. Something which it owns and it's competitors don't. Multi-touch was more an evolutionary gimmick wrapped in masterful marketting hyperbole. It's cute, but touch screens have been around a long time and are stupendously overrated: ultimate your hands are in the way of the display.

This is all if Microsoft actually gets it's shit together of course, something it's competitors have been doing better the last 9-10 years. If it does, it suddenly makes Windows mobile getting more market share entirely plausible.

One things for sure, gaming on smartphones is underwhelming - Apple sure isn't doing it right. Microsoft has proven sucess with gaming.

(Grips his android phone a little tighter)

Re:Kinect Phone

[Anonymous Coward]

How does motion control work for portable electronics? Does proud Johnny Doe stop walking, put the phone down in the middle of the sidewalk, take 10 paces, and then start waving his arms before screaming across to his phone?

Re:Naah I disagree

[jheath314]

They are so precise they even give the percentages down to the first decimal place... they're that good! I'd be impressed if they even got the ordinal rankings right over that stretch of time (1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc), even moreso if they could ballpark the percentages (30-ish %), but then again i suppose that's why I don't have people paying me to predict things.

Re:Color me shocked

[ConceptJunkie]

Just be careful not to use the same one IDC hired...

Re:Please don't link to xkcd "comics".

[SCPRedMage]

That would most certainly NOT be funny.

Now, if you were wearing a clown suit...

Why predict +4 years?

[kirkb]

Most people here are focusing on what this prediction claims (great market share for WP7 in four years), but can anybody explain why they're making this prediction?

I understand that in various industries, long-term projections are a valuable tool for suppliers, investors, and more. But in a business with 6-month product cycles, what's the value in predicting so far out? Who uses this information? How? When you consider that each and every cycle brings uncertain results, there's a huge accumulation of uncertainty when you're predicting what will happen 7 or 8 cycles from now.

I'd love to hear a statistician or researcher's thoughts on this.

Re:Why predict +4 years?

[konekoniku]

From having worked with similar data and consulted companies that purchase similar data, I can tell you that no one in the business seriously relies on IDC's (and Datamonitor, iSuppli, DisplaySearch, etc.'s) precise long-range forecasts at face value. However, these forecasts are still developed for several reasons.

1) Firms have to take a long-term view with regards to certain investments. I don't know this particular business well-enough, but e.g. firms may have to make go-no-go decisions on expanding existing manufacturing capacity or breaking ground on new factories. These could easily amount to $300mm decisions, which require some idea of the long-term growth trend. However, you don't need that much precision in these long-term forecasts -- typically for long-term forecasts like this, corporate strategy teams would be interested primarily in the overall trend and the order-of-magnitude only (e.g. will the market be $300M in 5 years? $3B? or just $30M?). Most large firms that use this data will have internal strategy teams developing similar forecasts based on internal sales data (which IDC will rarely have access to, and have to estimate), their own corporate intelligence (competitor channel checks, etc.), data on competitors' manufacturing capacity build-outs, etc. to provide a sanity-check, and they are aware that any data in the tech industry past 2-3 years out is (at best) useful for order-of-magnitude estimates only.

2) Even if this particular industry doesn't rely as much on long-term forecasts (e.g. I don't see why a factory churning out Android phones can't be quickly reconfigured to churn out WP7 phones), these data providers typically have long-term contracts that require them to provide forecasts out X years for Y number of product categories, to a Z level of detail. So if they're providing 5-year forecasts for semiconductors or LCD demand by manufacturer, for example (very reasonable considering the large capital investments and high retooling costs in those sectors), for the sake of consistency they'll also develop 5-year forecasts for smartphones by operating system. Similarly, mobile phone manufacturers will want at least a 5-year forecast for the overall smartphone market (to know how much total smartphone capacity to build out), and for the sake of consistency they'll also provide a breakdown out to that 5-year period.

In short, no one who really works with the data needs the level of precision implied by the article, but to generate any forecast you need some quantitative model that will provide a "best" estimate, so that's the estimate these firms are reporting. The fact that error bars get (exponentially) larger the farther out you go is already well-understood by any serious user.

No problems here

[Trogre]

I see no problems with this happening, so long as both are close to irrelevant and Android has the biggest market share. I would call that a likely scenario at this stage.

Re:inb4 shill

[the linux geek]

Looking at it purely from tools, I'd rather develop for WP7 than iPhone or Android. WP7 has a proper visual layout designer, while iPhone is tied to Xcode and ObjectiveC and Android has the awful XML layout system, in all of its buggy and inconsistent glory. (try putting a ListView in a ScrollView sometime!)

On the other hand, the niceness of the tools is offset by the fucking shameful cripplings in the library. The nastiest thing I can think of in this regard is lack of sockets, which makes a huge portion of modern software - you know, pretty much anything that isn't HTTP - impossible to write. There was some hope that this would end up in the NoDo update, but there's still no sign of it.

Didn't they learn last time?

[Tridus]

This is what happened when Gartner tried to predict the mobile market a few years out: http://www.asymco.com/2010/09/12/

They were so far off that it's hillarious today.

Re:Last Mover

[tsm_sf]

Ballmer: "I want a Zune you can make calls from."

Jobs: "I want a fucking star trek datapad, but awesomer."


THAT is the problem with Microsoft.

Fallacy of 'unstoppable' Microsoft

[Junta]

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.

IDC, I remember them!

[reybrujo]

They are the ones who said Wii was going to sell less than 15 million units in USA by 2010, while both the PS3 and Xbox 360 would each sell over 20 million units. A pity they missed Wii sales for, say, over 100%. http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/File:IDG_chart.png

Re:inb4 shill

[LDAPMAN]

What the heck is a a "proper visual layout designer" if Interface Builder doesn't qualify? It's by far the most powerful gui builder I've seen on any platform.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

45.4%

[multi io]

So, they're expecting Android to have a 45.4% market share in 2015. Not 45.3, not 45.5. That means that they think that their predictions have a relative error of less than 0.3% over a period of 4 years. OR, it means that they are a market research company that doesn't employ anyone who ever took a statistics 101 course.