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Apple Could Finally Sell More Devices Than Microsoft In 2017 (computerworld.com)
Gartner predicts Apple will ship more iOS and macOS devices in 2017 than Windows-powered devices "for the first time this century," and then increase their lead over the next two years. An anonymous reader quotes Computerworld:
Gartner predicted that iOS + macOS, unlike Windows, will recover in 2017. Apple's OSes will climb 8% to 268 million this year, add 3% in 2018 to reach 276 million, then increase another 3% in 2019, with that year's device shipment forecast at 285 million. Windows will dip this year, then stagnate for the following two years... The gap between Microsoft and Apple -- 12 million last year, with Microsoft atop -- will widen to 27 million by 2019, advantage Apple.
"The global devices market is stagnating," said Gartner analyst Ranjit Atwal in a statement Wednesday. Mobile phone shipments are growing only in emerging markets in the Asia and Pacific markets, Atwal added, and noted that "The PC market is just reaching the bottom of its decline." The PC industry's troubles have affected Microsoft most of all; Windows is almost entirely dependent on PC shipments, which have been stuck in a protracted slump. Future shipments were further hit when Microsoft walked away from the smartphone business last year.
The article also points out that even in 2016, Windows devices came in second, and "accounted for approximately 11.2% of the total devices, which overwhelmingly ran Google's Android."
"The global devices market is stagnating," said Gartner analyst Ranjit Atwal in a statement Wednesday. Mobile phone shipments are growing only in emerging markets in the Asia and Pacific markets, Atwal added, and noted that "The PC market is just reaching the bottom of its decline." The PC industry's troubles have affected Microsoft most of all; Windows is almost entirely dependent on PC shipments, which have been stuck in a protracted slump. Future shipments were further hit when Microsoft walked away from the smartphone business last year.
The article also points out that even in 2016, Windows devices came in second, and "accounted for approximately 11.2% of the total devices, which overwhelmingly ran Google's Android."
Predictions are not worth the toilet paper they are printed on.
Apple has suffered from a lack of progress ever since Jobs died. They are treading water... it took them 5 years to update the MacBook, and what we got was lackluster. 'Predicting' that they will succeed and Microsoft will falter is dubious.
The only real winner is Google, with Over 3/4 of the market for device operating systems.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
Wait, I would say MSFT had a decent mobile OS (relatively) from 2001-2007. I remember at the first iPhone (iOS 1), WM2005 had far more functionality (etc. GPS, apps, handwriting support). WM was better than PalmOS because I moved from the Palm m505 over to the HP iPaq 1910 and then to the GPS iPaq smartphone (don't remember the model number). iPhone didn't get gps support until the iPhone 3G.
So MSFT only screwed up the last 10 years of mobile development. It's the tortoise and hare problem. MSFT exceeded features and crushed the existing competitions (Palm, Netscape, Lotus, WordPerfect) and then sat around getting pass by new competitions (iOS, Android, Chrome).