back to article Windows Phone to overtake iOS in 2015

Nokia's ever-expanding friendship with Microsoft means that come 2015, the Windows Phone platform will overtake Apple's iOS as the world's second most-favoured operating system after Android. That's according to research firm IHS iSuppli, which this week forecast a positive outlook for the Finnish phone giant. According to …

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  1. Wang N Staines

    hahaha

    Delusional .... to be continue.

    1. LaeMing
      Happy

      I must admit,

      I have seen more credible stuff on GraphJam.

    2. N13L5
      Coffee/keyboard

      This bit of creative statistics palm reading sponsored by Micro$oft

      Delusional would be a good way to put it...

      But its also proof of concept that you can get anything repeated in the hall of mirrors that is modern media, if you have enough cash.

      A lot of people don't think about method and means of propaganda anymore. Since WWII, the subject seems to be dead, as if propaganda had gone away with the nazis... but its evolved into a greater monster and the lies haven't become any less blatant.

      There's really only one news aggregator left, since AP bought Reuters. Find out for yourself who owns that. And guess how easy it is to manipulate the news from that single bottleneck.

      But everybody who even comes close to realizing there's something wrong quickly takes the blue pill, hoping to forget by the morning.

    3. RAMChYLD
      Boffin

      re: Delusional

      I'll drink to that. Evil as Apple be, at least the App store is available in 9/10 of the world.

      Windows Marketplace and Zune Marketplace? Nope. Only two third of the world gets it.

      Remind me again why I'd want a phone that I can't load new software on to.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Makes me wonder...

    How much money did that research firm manage to gross in? Think about it; as if anyone during the predicted time will hold all of this against them when things turns out to be wrong (which I personally think it will be).

    1. LaeMing
      Unhappy

      Not really,

      corporate and journalistic memories are far too short for that to be a risk.

      1. N13L5

        @ LaeMing - sadly, you are correct

        That is the reason why we seem to almost be asking to be treated like cattle.

        Nobody remembers anything, in part, because there's some subconscious faculty in the mind that seems to know the information we are fed is all wrong to begin with, so why store it...

        Gaddafi was great to do business with for 30 odd years... then suddenly, he had to go because of things everybody knew he was doing all along. Right... Sure... Mind telling us the real reason? No, sorry, if we told you, we'd have to kill you too.

  3. Admiral Grace Hopper

    OS/2

    I remember similar predictions for OS/2. Remind me how that went again ...

  4. Joe K
    FAIL

    THats it

    Pack it up RegHardware, you've officially lost your mind and need to put down.

    Repeating nonsense numbers from a deranged crystal ball gazer as a news story of any kind utterly damages your credibility as a professional website.

    1. ElReg!comments!Pierre
      Alert

      to be honest...

      ... I have noticed a definite trend towards the lowering in the biting rate these days. What happened to the " biting the hand that feeds" motto? Concurrently, the readership figures apparently jumped through the roof. Less marketting strategy and more teeth would be welcome.

      Oh noes we've lost pulse! Charge. "STAND BACK!". Shock.

      Rince, lathe, repeat.

    2. cortezcortez

      As bad as all those "Apple is worth more than..." articles which show utter illiteracy when it comes to business and economics.

      Tip to journalists: comparing market cap to GDP is stupid.

  5. Giles Jones Gold badge

    Lies, lies and statistics

    Such predictions are always based upon a specific measurement at a single point in time and the assumption is that the rate of change or direction of change for a particular product will remain the static.

    But as we all know things are never static, Blackberry sales are diminishing as are Symbian based phones.

    I'm guessing they also omitted the iPad figures, it's still iOS even if it isn't a phone.

    1. jai

      rate of change / direction of change

      and i think that is the problem here. the WinPho platform is far too new for any meaningful statistics to be drawn

      but then, as we all know, analysts never bother themselves with facts or even realistic estimates. they don't earn money by saying "it's quite exciting, but we'll have to wait and see how it turns out". instead i'm sure they get paid to throw bones in the air and then shake a magic 8 ball.

      it's no coincidence that the beginning of the word analyst and the end of the word bullshit are so closely related

      1. Tom 35

        No!

        "i'm sure they get paid to throw bones in the air and then shake a magic 8 ball."

        No they might come up with the wrong answer that way...

        It works like creation science. First you have the answer, then you do a "study" to reach that answer. Anything that gets in the way like facts is discarded.

        I expect the more you want to stretch reality, the more the study will cost you.

  6. Steve Knox
    Trollface

    I'm assuming...

    that these two organizations subcontracted the research in this case to one Jim Coleman?

  7. Kevin Johnston
    Pint

    Sounds good

    I'll have a pint of whatever they are drinking, looks to be damn good stuff

    1. LaeMing
      Go

      It comes in pints?!

      I was assuming they were consuming it by the keg.

  8. Nick Ryan Silver badge

    Comical

    Comical... Really can't think much beyond that.

    Regardless of your particular love / hate affair with iOS (iPhones), Joe Public consider them the "in device" to have and claiming that winPho will miraculously shoot up in market share in such a manner is just delusional.

    This is before you consider the lengthening contract lock-ins that most phone users suffer with these days. i.e. somebody who purchases an iPhone today is likely to have a 2 year lock in before changing and during this time even if the device annoys the hell out of them on occasion they will have content and purchases that are tied to the vendor if not the device. This tie in might be loose but should not be underestimated when it comes to the weight of encouragement it places upon the user in their decision to either stick with the same vendor or move away. After all, keep with a similar system that you at least understand and keep your content and purchases or move to a new, unfamiliar system, and risk losing your content and having to re-purchase applications that you previously paid for?

  9. Silverburn

    Android at 58%?

    Much as I love the platform, that aint gonna happen unless they get the malware issue under some sort of control (already over 92 unique families in the wild). Preferably without the need for 3rd party AV apps with the performance characteristics of chocolate teapots.

    1. Silverburn

      Downvoted twice? So there's no android malware, right? I was just imagining it? I await the downvoters justification with interest.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        no, your correct, your just not aloud to say such things on here, even though your point had nothing todo with MS, it is against android, which means it must be pro MS comment which means you must be downvoted. I happen to like WP a lot, suites my needs just fine (ill get downvoted for that comment too) but i happen to agree that this report is a bit odd, i cant see MS and Nokia changing the situation that much unless they can get the networks onboard and their in bed big time with Apple and android because one is a status device the other is cheap (for them) ie they make more profit from them. That article about MS giving out cash to sales persons punting WP devices might be a good idea, or they could sack the whole marketing team and get someone else to do a propper job of it.

    2. fishman

      Windows

      Malware didn't stop Windows becoming the overwhelming choice on PCs. And quite a few people will associate malware with WP, since it is "Windows".

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        @Fishman

        The malware came after Windows was popular.

    3. ElReg!comments!Pierre

      If you have to ask why...

      TL-DR: you missed the point by a Brontosaurus or two.

      Build a popular platform and the malware will come. There is Android malware because Android dominates the market. Even the walled garden doesn't suffice to keep the malware away from fruitphones, as has been showed several times. Although it does help: there is always a compromise between openness and security. My personnal needle is biased towards the "open" side of the dial, but to each its own (I don't own any android device, though). In passing, that is the exact recipe that made early Windows' success, and one of its most crippling woes: anyone could write stuff for the platform and get anyone else to install it, which attracted weekend developpers and malware writers alike.

      Calling that "the malware issue" is, in my opinion -and for the downvoters I guess- misguided at best. There is some bad stuff around targetted at Android, yes. There is some bad stuff targetted at iOS, too (malware and scams alike; "I am rich"...). From what I gather in my social circles and in news outlets, it is very marginal (for iOS and Android alike). It regularly makes headlines only because quack infosec specialists are loved by mainstream media for their ability to provide doomsday headline.

      1. Goat Jam

        There is Android malware because Android dominates the market.

        Nonsense.

        iOS is not that far behind and where is the malware?

        1. Silverburn
          Thumb Down

          @ Goat Jam

          This is exactly my point - Android malware up 472% in a year, with no corrosponding "reported" comparable increase for iOS. Where are the MDM's for Android? Where are 'working' AV solutions I can manage centrally?

          This is why not one of the downvoters have singularly failed to answer. Not one has reputed my claim - just downvoted because I refuted the sanctity of Android. Forget comparisons to Windows, forget IOS - I don't use either of those. I just want answers to the droid question I posed.

          I *do* use Android, both as a user and as an admin, so I want to know if this technology will keep the Information Security department off my back in the months/years to come. So far, given the press publications, they've got good reasons to come knocking at my door. Just a pity I can't 'downvote' them as easily as I have been here.

  10. Toastan Buttar
    WTF?

    Predictions out to 2015?

    They just pulled numbers out their butts.

    "Why Speculate?" by Michael Crichton:

    http://www.wbsi.org/ilfdigest/commentaries_mar_04.htm

  11. Chad H.

    A bit dilusional

    I don't think its iOS that needs to worry about WinMob. iOS devices have been positioned in the market as being on the edge of a luxury phone (rightly or wrongly), whereas Android hasn't hit that mark, and just become an "everyphone everywhere" os.

    WinMob is following the Android route to market. This analysis seems to be based on the faulty premise that 100+ Androids and 100+ WinMob phones are going to sell a certain number of handsets per model and thus drown out the handful of active models iOS - simply not going to happen.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Holmes

    Here's another extract from that report:

    Windows phone market share has declined year-on-year since 2007. Projecting forwards, we expect it to hit zero basis points later this year at which point it will obviously bounce and rise very fast, aided by new models from Nokia that will be available in yellow (this analysis is based on the premise that yellow balloons rise faster than blue ones).

    Beyond the 2015 timeframe, windows phone will hit 100% penetration (or "up to the hilt" if you prefer the analyst's term). It's impossible to say yet whether it'll bounce again or simply disappear at that point.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    This is painful.

    I did the iSuppli article the courtesy of reading it the whole way through, and there's no indication anywhere that the research was paid for by Microsoft, Nokia or anyone i.e. it seems to be independent; therefore iSuppli are not shills; they're just clowns.

    To call it 'research' is being extremely kind. They're just making the numbers up as they go along. The statistical projection seems to indicate that WinPho will steal the extra market share from Symbian; and that Symbian will lose market share to WinPho *and nobody else*.

    And there's plenty else in there to indicate that their 'research' has hardly been diligent, e.g. 'RIM, whose Blackberry phones are popular among corporate users' (duh #1: the only reason RIM have market presence at all right now is that they've been able to sell BlackBerrys to the kids as well); and 'Because of Nokia’s support, apps developers will eagerly shore up the Windows platform' (duh #2: did they actually speak to any Nokia/Symbian developers, and find out how they really feel about moving, or being made to move, to developing for WinPho?)

    Off to read Popbitch now, where the research is often as spurious but usually much more entertaining.

    1. MD Rackham

      There's always next time

      MS and Nokia may not have commissioned this report, but after such an excellent blowjob, don't you think they might be first in line when the next batch of "favorable report dollars" are dished out?

  14. CJatCTi

    How do these company make money from pure guesswork?

    I have been in Telecoms for 25 years & lost count of the presentations I have seen that say in 5 years time XYZ. Experience has told me they are invariably wrong. Someone could to a nice study on how many came right & companies like Gartner & this one would go bust, but nobody ever checks back.

  15. ratfox
    Trollface

    Apple does not care

    They will still make 90% of the profits in the market

  16. Miek
    Linux

    Those stats look a bit odd to me, can IOS be doing that badly? Surely when the next iPad and iPhone are released the IOS curve will go through the roof?

    1. Johan Bastiaansen
      FAIL

      Indeed

      What, Apple plans to release new Ipads and Iphones?

      I don't think we took that into account.

      Oops.

    2. Ron Christian

      can ios do that badly?

      The market share of IOS is respectable considering it's marketed as a boutique device with a high profit margin. IOS is essentially the Harley-Davidson of the phone world. If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand.

      Android doesn't have the mindshare of IOS but it's dirt cheap and has equivalent functionality, so the numbers will tend to be greater.

      I don't see that WP really has a place in the market. It's mindshare has been forever destroyed by that frustrating waste of time that was Windows Mobile, and it's got to have a more expensive overhead cost than Android. So it has terrible mindshare at boutique prices -- essentially the worst of all possible worlds.

  17. GatesFanbois
    Windows

    Hell I like my windows phone but how anyone could take this report seriously is beyond me.

  18. TXITMAN
    Coat

    How much

    So how much did MS pay for that article?

  19. Conrad Longmore
    Coat

    I was going to take the piss..

    I was going to take the piss out of this prediction.. after all, how can struggling Microsoft beat the mighty Apple in the smartphone market?

    But actually the prediction makes some sense, as what it is really saying is that the market for non-iOS/non-Android smartphones will consolidate around Windows Phone rather than other the other platforms. And that might (just might) squeeze out Apple in terms of volumes shipped.

    Remember, whatever the figures, Apple is making much more per unit than rivals, so the units shipped doesn't tell the whole story.

    1. jeffdyer

      so what about profit?

      as a developer i want to know what os will have the largest userbase. i don't care how much the fanbois are getting ripped off for their Jesus phones only which have the biggest numbers.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I can believe it!

    After all iOS not only has the "your a bit thick" air around it, it looks and feels OLD and is just pants.

    More and more people are coming to realise this. Give it another 3 years and that will only be compounded.

    1. Alex Rose
      Unhappy

      @Obviously!

      "your a bit thick"

      The fucking irony!

    2. Wibble
      Windows

      And obviously...

      you're assuming that iOS will remain static. And WinPhOS hits its targets.

      Interesting that the report assumes that WinPhOS' main rival is iOS and not Android. Seems odd as WinPhOS will end up being given away as MS chuck money at it; therefore taking market share from Android.

      Yep, that'll be the case. WInPhOS will be given away, so takes market share. Should we flog this to Microsoft as a strategy?

      On another graph, profit, iOS is shown as 80% with all the rest left in the noise.

      1. ElReg!comments!Pierre

        > you're assuming that iOS will remain static.

        History says it mostly will

        > And WinPhOS hits its targets.

        History says it mostly won't. History also says it probably won't matter.

        That's not a judgement on the merit of the platforms. Just an observation. iOS saw pretty little actual changes since its creation*, and MS current overwhelming desktop dominance doesn't have anything to do with reaching targets.

        *well, appart from the token fixes of deliberate omissions like copy/paste ans such

  21. Gil Grissum
    Pint

    This article promotes a rather optimistic viewpoint for Windows Phone. Seems like random calculations based purely on speculation. This assumes of course that Apple's iPhone release this year and next year aren't even remotely impressive or that less people buy them than are to be expected. Or maybe this article is based on the fact that Windows phones have replaced iPhones on popular CBS TV shows? LOL!!!

  22. Wanda Lust

    Loud enough & often enough

    The world, today, is littered with both idiots and intelligent people intent on informing us of their beliefs. They both have access to the same conduits for the dissemination of their opinions. The value of these opinions is approximately equal: it's zero, just extraneous noise, I'm not even suggesting they cancel each other out, the aggregate is zero. The referenced articles are perfect examples of this phenomenon. Just look around, they're everywhere.

    TGIF!

  23. Pyper13
    FAIL

    Yeah right...

    The problem with ridiculous predictions like this is that they consider that Apple will stall where it is now, while only Microsoft will innovate in phones. Apple is likely, as a corporate entity, to do all in its possible to stay ahead of Microsoft's Windows Phone by releasing newer, attractive hardware (iPhone 5, anyone?) and newer software (iOS) to go along with it. I agree, that if Apple does nothing, Windows Phone does have a chance at passing iOS, but the likely hood of that... I would not bet on it!

    1. hplasm
      Happy

      Things you don't often see in a sentence; #18.

      Microsoft...

      Innovate...

      ...in Phones.

  24. squilookle
    Meh

    I like the look of WP7, I believe it's market share will expand and I hope it does (no plans to jump ship from Android but the more options there are, the better) but these numbers do just seem made up.

    Also, any number of things could change between now and then that completely change things, even if the basis of the figures were sound... someone could pick up webOS and run with it from nowhere, MS could pull out of the smartphone race, Canonical might get their act together and get Ubuntu onto smartphones, and it might take off.

    I'm not saying these things are likely, but even less likely things have happened in the past, and will happen again.

    1. Paul Shirley

      Haven't you heard? Microsoft just pulled a 'Nokia' on WebOS, putting their own man in to sabotage the company. WebOS is more likely to be a burnt platform before 2015 than revived.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

  25. Dave 15

    Its possible, but what evidence...

    What evidence are they using to make this prediction? The graphs are pretty and plausible but a few years back the graphs for S60 were also plausible and not at all the same shape as todays reality.

    Nokia - and Microsoft if I'm honest - both need to wake up to being decidedly in nth place behind just about everyone else. They STILL haven't grasped that. News of a new Nokia phone has leaked, but by accident and with no real information - compare this to the leaks from Apple which are clearly deliberate. If you are top of the pile (as Nokia were in mobile and Microsoft in desk top 5 years ago) leaking information about your next wonderful product just loses you sales on your current product while people wait. If you are bottom of the pile then telling people how wonderful the thing you will release in a months time is might lose the current top of the pile sales while people wait for you.

    The marketting departments in BOTH companies need to be sacked en-massse and be replaced with people that understand marketting.

    Apple's iPhone STILL doesn't do most of the things a S60 mobile of 5 years ago did, certainly they are miles behind the S60 of today, yet Apple still advertise that 'if you don't have an iPhone you can't do...' EVEN when its a lie. As Goebels once said - if you tell a lie - even a massive lie - often enough people believe it.

  26. Keep Refrigerated
    Trollface

    Typical Deniers

    Commentards on this article are typical deniers.

    The model clearly shows that the Microsoft trend is that it's going to beat iOS by 2015, I don't understand why anyone would disagree with this when the evidence is right there!

    1. LaeMing

      Downvoters, note the icon!

    2. cortezcortez
      Stop

      We understand the premise; it's the conclusion we disagree with. Past performance is not an indication of future performance, and there is little on the horizon which suggests MS is going to take leaps forward in this sector in short to medium term.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nothing against Android, MicroSoft or Apple, but I don't see it happening. No one, and I mean no one that I know has a winphone. Most people I interact with on a daily basis have Iphones or some phone with Android running. A few have the odds and ends like Blackberry or some generic OS like I'm running.... what one would typically find on any clam shell phone. The people who are using Iphones are not looking at any other phone. A few are talking about getting Androids in the future. Android users are totally happy with what they have. The odd men out such as myself are looking at Androids. WinPhone has never even been considered, even by the younger users.

    I just don't see the winphone doing anything that will grab peoples attention. I don't like the way the interface is, and all the commercials and corporate backing will not convince me or others that we are using our phones wrong, and that MicroSoft can solve that problem. The idea of Windows 8 having the same interface as an option won't help. It won't work on a desktop, and unless they can make a dent in the tablet market, it just won't take.

    1. jeffdyer

      pedant

      it stopped being MicroSoft years ago. get with the program

  28. chipxtreme

    As much as I hate crapple, this is never going to happen.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Seriously, thumbs down on my previous comment? Just because I or no one else I know is interested in a winphone, I can't see it making a great impact deserves to be voted down?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Relax, Taylor 1

      Thumbs up or thumbs down are superficial. Objective truth and reality will stand on its own.

      By not expressing interest or criticizing Windows phones (or even wrinkling your nose at the Metro UI), you have already offended the fanboys and astroturfers of Microsoft (*cough* wpcentral *cough*).

      You are automatically shamed as a bum boy of Steve Jobs, or an Android geek. They're projecting their insecurities onto you because their product didn't sell.

  30. Julian 3
    Coffee/keyboard

    Windows Phone to overtake iOS in 2015 and other fairy tales

    ......and they all lived happily ever after.

  31. Richard Plinston

    Wait for W8

    There are many things that the 'report' fails to account for, including a new platform appearing, or the return of Maemo/Meego/Tizen as partial replacement of Android, or even real Linux with Ubuntu.

    But what will mainly affect Windows Phone is W8 and 'Wait'.

    The 'wait' part is the painful marketing that keeps saying 'wait for what will be coming soon' whenever a WP7 phone is released. With 7.0, it was 'wait for 7.1', then Mango. With the Nokia 800 and 710 released these are non-HD and single core (restricted by MS specs and lack of capability in WP7) so they talk about 'SuperPhone' that will be dual core and HD, just wait until the end of the year.

    By the end of this year (or next) Windows 8 will be available, at least on x86. You may have to wait for W8 on ARM. As W8 will be on 'everything' then one can expect it on phones. WP7 is CE based but W8 (and WP8) should be full Windows. WP7 broke compatability with previous WM6.x and it can be expected that while WP8 may run WP7 apps somewhat the new W8 should make anything that was WP7 obsolete. It is also _very_ unlikely that any current WP7 phones or even any produced this year will be able to run W8, they simply aren't powerful enough.

    The consequence is that anything WP7 will be obsolete by the end of this year, either actually (if WP8 actually arrives) or virtually (if there is no WP8 when W8 appears on tablets).

    In the meantime WP7 is looking archaic being restricted to single core and there being no tablets, while Android gets quad core with performance and battery life advantages, and more different devices such as TV and Cameras (proper ones not just tiny phone cameras).

  32. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I doubt at this rate Nokia will even be around in 2015 in never mind a major player.

    MS were too late in the mobile phone OS race to get a decent product to market and nowt its either iOS if you want a premium brand or Android for the rest, although i believe Blackberry is still popular with teens possibly because of BBM.

    I don't see Window 8 tablets making much difference either, the inability to run legacy apps and the requirement to only install apps from Microsoft app store will put off businesses and home users will either get the iPad3 which is due soon or one of the flood of cheap half decent tablets coming from China now that Android 4 source code has been released.

    Microsoft should just get back to what they do best, over charging for office and making money from FOSS software through patent licensing.

    1. Johan Bastiaansen
      WTF?

      Really?

      "MS were too late in the mobile phone OS".

      Really?

      Pocket PC 2002 was to late in 2002? When did Android and iOS enter the race then? The previous millenium?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I think he meant...

        "MS were too late in the 'not utterly shit mobile OS' market.

        I always regretted buying a Pocket PC 2003 device instead of a Palm OS device. Perhaps if more of us hadn't made that mistake Palm would not have died.

  33. Ron Christian

    alternately

    Alternately, Windows Phone will drag Nokia under. By 2015 Nokia will be a sad footnote in history and geeks will share stories about how cool the 9500 was.

  34. Joe Montana
    FAIL

    Gartner, haha

    Gartner predicted that windows mobile would dominate the mobile space by 2010...

    Instead, windows mobile failed miserably and has been deprecated entirely in favour of a new but incompatible product.

    Why do people put any stock whatsoever in what gartner say?

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    iSuppli are idiots

    And spout incessant crap. Ignore them.

  36. ElReg!comments!Pierre
    FAIL

    Erm... guys...

    So, with Android at 58%, triple the share of anyone else, you reckon that Linux will be one of the big losers. I think I'll need a bit of an explanation there, I got lost.

  37. Christian Berger

    There's next to no market differenciation

    All of the current platforms are more or less the same. You have a system, which is supposed to be more or less closed down (so the makers don't worry about actual security) you try to offset this by making a "market" or "store" to distribute software. However there always is a clear distinction between the programmer and the user, and the later is only presented with a fairly powerless shell.

    Ohh and porting programs from older platforms is hard as there is next to no compatibility.

    Now Microsoft would have had the chance to allow ARM-Windows 8 to run legacy Win32 and Win16 applications. That would have been a real killer-feature. Suddenly companies could use tablets and move their old legacy applications onto those. Think about it, if porting was possible, they most likely wouldn't port it to an app, but a browser based solution.

    Nokia used to try to deviate a bit from what we have now with the N770 which essentially ran a cut-down version of Debian. You had repositories instead of App-Stores, and quite a bit of normal Linux software was ported. OpenVPN, which is very important for businesses, was available pretty much from day one, for example. As far as I can tell, this was the first time you had something very similar to a standard desktop operating system on a mobile device.

    I guess much innovation could be started by unbundling software from hardware. Once you have a system in which you can install any operating system you like, you can use it for whatever you like. This way the PC developed from a single-user single-tasking machine in the 1980s, to something which would wipe out the workstation market. If PCs would only come with MS-DOS, that wouldn't have happened, but since you could run any OS on those there was progress.

  38. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Only fools believe this BS

    Fool me once....

    http://www.geekwire.com/2012/isupplis-2009-windows-mobile-prediction-shows-wrong-predictions

    iSuppli is either filled with very incompetent 'researchers', or they're bribed by Microsoft. I think the truth lies somewhere in between the two.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Windows 8 will be a colossal failure of epic proportions

    Why Microsoft 8 doesn’t matter (Daniel Eran Dilger)

    http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2011/09/15/why-microsoft-8-doesnt-matter/

    Read the article. Read it again. And again.

    Read the comment section. Read it again. And again.

    If you still think Windows 8 will amount to anything, good luck. You'll need it.

  40. Graham Wilson
    Flame

    I've a Nokia.

    My next phone won't be.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Oh well in that case!

      "I've a Nokia. My next phone won't be."

      Well I guess that they might as well declare bankruptcy right now, eh?

  41. Flashy Red
    Trollface

    LOL

    What were they smoking?

  42. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Having used both Android and WinPhone 7, I think this report is wrong.

    I think that WinPhone will be outselling Android. WinPhone is actually a good product wheras Android is plain nasty.

    In addition, handset vendors are having to pay for stolen patents, so the financial attraction of Android will decrease.

    Plus, Google make very little money from Android and it must cost them a fortune so I reckon they will start winding down their investment which will mean slower releases etc.

    1. Turtle

      Well, not really.

      According to documents filed in the Oracle vs Google case, Android is bringing in several billion dollars a year for Google.

  43. hazydave
    Alien

    Walk, then run...

    Windows Phone overtaking iOS? I'm pretty sure it has a few other obstacles first: like overtaking SymbianOS, Blackberry, BadaOS, and heck, even Windows Mobile is still selling at a higher percentage of the market. The last quarter numbers I saw, for the US market, put iOS at 37% for the quarter, Android at 54%, WinMo at 2.5%, and Windows Phone at 1.4%... pretty flat for the year.

    Yes, Nokia has some better models than Nokia had before, given that they didn't have any Windows Phone models, and yet, told all their customers a year ago that everything they were selling was already obsolete. The flagship Lumia 900 does LTE, but other than that, it's inferior in every way to the iPhone, and pretty much every leading Android device. Maybe Windows Phone users don't care about spec. Everyone thinks iPhone users don't, but they actually do, and that's pretty true of other smartphone buyers, too.

    Also, if you look at least quarter, while Windows 7 Phone was up by 0.1% for the quarter, neither Android nor iOS lost ground... their growth came from Windows Mobile, RIM, and the tiny presence of SymbianOS in the USA. Nokia may have SymbianOS customers as a natural place from which to loot market share in the UK and Europe, but otherwise, Windows Phone is going to have a very hard time dislodging iOS or Android users. Their campaign in the USA so far has been to try to attract dumb-phone buyers. That's failed.

    Apple, in particular, has a weapon neither Microsoft nor Nokia are currently playing: the iPod Touch and the iPad. If they have wealthy parents, kids may get smartphones, but for most, that extra $20-$30/month is just too steep. But many kids get a taste of iOS, in particular, early on, via the iPad and, particularly, the iPod Touch. That means they're already well indoctrinated in iOS before they go out to buy their first phone. Some may have been exposed to Android on similar devices, but these are much less common right now. I suppose there are a few Zune still around at flea markets, but Microsoft never really did the Zune well enough to make it a lead-in to Windows Phone. Anyway, the natural choice of most will be iOS or Android, not Windows Phone.

    I suspect these pundits are of the opinion that Windows 8 will be rapidly accepted, and that the Metro interface, inflicted on users starting sometime in 2012, will drive users to Windows Phones in subsequent years. But in fact, there's no automatic win for Metro. It's functional, if a little stupid, as a phone OS, but it's pointless on the desktop. Microsoft's panic to use the desktop to push the handheld could very well backfire, and deliver another Vista, or worse.

    And nothing is likely to make Microsoft a "cool" choice. This is, after all, a consumer market. Consumers buy what's cool, what's trendy. That's iOS and Android. Microsoft is the thing you're trying to get away from with your mobile computing device.

    1. P. Lee
      Linux

      find what you do well

      MS do have a chance. Probably not with "consumers" but with employees who don't have a choice or don't care about their phone.

      What MS can do better than anyone else is integration with their own products. Better AD integration/setup, with MS chat/voice/communicator/email could be the clincher for those who can't afford iphone shiney and not interested in android functionality.

      The issue is that phone functions are very quickly commoditised as apple have found with the iphone and (more so) with the tablets. With Android-makers such as Asus stepping up the "shiney" with the latest transformer tablet and the sony phones, even the ooh factor Apple had is becoming less of a differentiator.

      MS's problem is that Apple isn't going away from the "cool" part of the market and Android has the rest. To start a new proprietary ecosystem (without quick FLOSS ports) will be difficult. Fortunately for MS, that may not be as important as Apple like to make out, in the same way that the desktop OS ecosystem wasn't important to phones, Apple's ecosystem may not be important to MS. Speaking from experience with webos, I would love to have mpeg2 streaming to the device from mythtv, but apart from that, the existing software is pretty much all I feel the need for. Yep, the webos/preware ecosystem is enough (for me).

      So MS might be able to leverage corporate email to get into the phone market. Or they might just stuff up the execution. I can't see any interface making a difference. I would think the windows brand would be at best a distraction (it isn't really related to your apps) and at worst a liability (who wants to bring their work pc troubles home).

      They question will be... do corporates want control of the phone, or would they rather employees deal with that and only allow windows desktops to connect to their networks? If MS get into voip deskphones (like cisco have) they there may be critical mass and infrastructure investment to give them a kickstart.

      Let's see how important corporate email sync really is with fast-waking laptops and how much corporates want to pay to control employees' phones. Also with bluetooth, employees might opt to use their own tablet or laptop as a phone interface, masking the phones' lack of importance.

  44. Euchrid

    What iSuppli said in 2009

    "Despite intensifying competition and the loss of some high-profile licensees, the usage of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile operating system in smart phones will nearly triple from 2009 to 2013, allowing it to reclaim the No.-2 position in the global market, according to iSuppli Corp.

    In 2013, 67.9 million smart phones will use the Windows Mobile operating system, up from 27.7 million in 2009. This will give Windows Mobile a 15.3 percent share of the global market in 2013, second only to the Symbian operating system, which will control 47.6 percent."

    http://www.isuppli.com/mobile-and-wireless-communications/news/pages/reports-of-windows-mobiles-death-are-greatly-exaggerated.aspx

  45. Ant Evans
    Boffin

    Numiricy & punditry

    The minimum *uncompounded* margin of error of this prediction exceeds the projected difference by an order of magnitude. However even I can see that 'Windows phone may or may not overtake iOS in a few years' doesn't make such a good headline.

    Now if someone were ever to put these pundits and their pundit-wallahs to the test, that would make for interesting numbers. We need the IT equivalent of politifact.com. Come on, let's burn some bridges.

  46. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Not....

    I wonder if such a non-controversial article will get any responses.....

    No, Windows Mobile will flop. Why? It is suicide for the phone manufacturers. They have to pay huge royalties to Microsoft. They are unable to alter the interface which put them in a commodity market against all of the other Windows Mobile OEMs (see PCs for an example).

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