Microsoft Predicts 40% of the Smartphone Market by 2012
They must have some pretty good stuff up in WA these days. Unless Microsoft plans to conjure up some serious dough and buy Nokia, this just isn’t going to happen. During a period of time that will be looked back on as a turning point in the history of mobile device platforms, Microsoft is pulling a Babe Ruth and pointing toward the stands. Just one problem though - the Sultan of Swat was a dominant force to be reckoned with when he did it. Microsoft on the other hand is currently batting around .130 with Rookie of the Year Apple threatening to take their spot in the line up. Ok, ok; we’re taking the baseball analogies a bit too far… Managing Director of Microsoft ODM embedded devices Eddie Wu has stated that Microsoft expects Windows Mobile-powered devices to account for 40% of the global smartphone market by mid-fiscal year, 2012. Hmm. Wu also states that the company is focusing on Windows Mobile 6.1 in 2008 and has no plans to release version 7 until next year. This is in direct contradiction of course, with the MWg roadmap we told you about last week. Normally we would believe a higher-up at Microsoft but considering the 40% prediction, we’re not sure what to think.
[Via IntoMobile]
Great picture!
WM is toast once Android devices start coming. Win Mobile’s only strength is its easy connection to exchange. Sans that, its basically crap. It still crashes and has to be rebooted frequently. You still have to drill down through countless menus options to do what you want. Instead of trying to stuff Windows into a mobile platform, they should have made a mobile platformed the worked with windows. You can’t tell M$ that though, they think they know best [Zune, Vista and failed Yahoo deal prove that]
They only reason WM has any market share at all is that it and Symbian are the only mobile OS that are not proprietary. Even with that fact, Blackberry and the iphone are cornering the market. Android will further erode their market share.
M$ is right about one thing, smartphones are the future, they just won’t be running WM.
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Yes, and they thought Vista would be a big hit just like Millennium Edition was. I like the sound of whatever world they are living in, though, so can I order a few kilos of whatever they are smoking?
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Microsoft is a Sinking ship but don’t take my word for it. Vista fail, Xbox 360 is plague with RROD, Zune sales are worst than ever with 4% market share in 1/12 in the market, MSN search is Dead, Windows Mobile got buried by Rim & is going to get hit even harder with iPhone & google Android. I grew up using Windows but my own opinion is that they’re down downhill. People are starting to give up on Microsoft, i think that the next 5 years are going to hard on it
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Their batteries will never make it to 2012… or an 8 hour workday…
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This is quite laughable.
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so, is this a way of saying they plan to make $1 devices for the chinese market? otherwise, i don’t see this happening.
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I don’t see why they wont. They are putting WM on all typed of devices. I love my WM phone and won’t be switching to anything else. And I don’t see how anyone can say that Android will even make a dent in the market. They will not be doing anything that anyone else hasn’t already been doing for years. Same with Apple’s iPhone. People rage over the iPhone, but WM devices have been doing pretty much all the crap it can do for years. It’s a pretty device, but most people who pay top dollar for phones want more than pretty.
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Funniest picture ever. Them boys in Redmond sure are smoking that good stuff. I’ve used WM myself for years, and I hate joining the crowd and hopping on the bandwagon, but I’m just kind of tired of Microsoft in general. There have just been too many let downs in the face of better productivity from the competition. I could write for days on that topic, but fact is, there is no way they are holding 40% of the market unless they have some alien tech that nobody knows about.
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I still like my Kaiser, but that supersized Touch sticking out of the vest pocket just cracked me up. Great pic
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Dude, android is 20x better than windows mobile, not only that, it’s free. take a look at this graph and see how iphone compares to other in the market
& remember iphone is just 1 model with less than a year on the market
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=575
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I guess they will be giving RIM the other 60% of all smartphone users…
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Free? So Nokia, Samsung, HTC,… will be giving away free phones? Dolt.
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What is even more amazing about that graph is that the iphone OS only runs on one device, while M$ “wonder OS” runs on dozens.
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where is that picture actually taken from? im curious about homies huge vaporizing bong?
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“Microsoft predicts 40% of the smartphone market by 2012.”
Predicts what, exactly? Are they just going to offer predictions on 40% of it by that date, leaving us without the benefit of their prognostications on the other 60%? Or, are they predicting that blue monkeys will come shooting out of my butt 40% of the time by 2012? Inquiring minds want to know. You can’t just “predict”, you have to actually predict “something”. Tossers.
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This is quite laughable.
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How much is WM success tied to HTC?
What happens if HTC drops M$ for LiMo or Android in a couple years?
I meet many S60 users but I’ve only met a couple WM users that actually have a clue how to use their devices for anything more than a phone call. Odd folks. I seldom call anyone unless it’s a senior citizen in the family.
Back to WM. How is the platform going anywhere if the users never buy/install apps and never bother paying for HSDPA?
Why not let WM users use feature phones with a decent mail client?
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Looking at that graph, I can see where they got their predictions from. By 2012 Palm will be gone, so that’s like 10% and the Palm OS relates closest to WinMo, thusly that 10% will go to WinMo and seeing as they have about 25%, that’ll put them at about 35%. Now by 2012, unless apple does something amazing or major companies really do toss out all of their BB’s (which is VERY unlikely) apple will probably lose about 20% (or BB but that is much more unlikely) and 15% of that 20% loss will go to BB (again, it’s very unlikely apple will get it) and the other 5% would go to WinMo which would make them at about 40% market share by 2012.
If you just look at the graph and figure how people are recognizing their phones and all the news about how the companies are doing now, it’s really quite simple.
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I actually outlined a scenario on my blog in which this could be a possibility. The only thing Microsoft would need to do is to buy HTC and bring them in house to develop some seriously sexy phones like the Touch Diamond directly for Microsoft, as well as have the HTC software engineers join the Windows Mobile OS team, to help make Windows Mobile better, and you’d see their marketshare in the mobile space jump quite a bit I’d think. Maybe something like this is in the cards?
Read the article further if you’re interested:
http://justinflood.com/?p=113
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this is about as plausible as an iphone capable of running winmo roms. That will never happen, so I’ll just be continuously updating the capabilities of my treo 650 with warranty voiding freeware and ROM hacks until the end of time.
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pheer,
There are guys who already put WinMo6 on an iPhone. They wrote up a whole review on how it works and said it runs quite well on the iPhone…kinda like Windows on a Mac.
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