[james99]

IDC on Tuesday released a new report detailing its vision of the smartphone market through 2011 and beyond. The research firm sees global smartphone shipments climbing to 450 million units in 2011, up 49.2% from 303.4 million units in 2010

 

[jvincent]

Even with Nokia adopting Windows Phone, I find that very hard to believe.

 

[audacity]

Even with Nokia adopting Windows Phone, I find that very hard to believe.

Why?

Microsoft is offering their OS to all the hardware vendors "out there" and with Nokia, the largest hardware vendor becoming an exclusive Windows Phone partner I don't see these numbers as being unrealistic.

Of course, 5-year out predictions are hard to do, but I think it's realistic for mobile operating systems that are available to all hardware vendors will be more numerous than the OS platforms that are proprietary to a single line of devices (iOS, Blackberry, webOS).

I'm not saying they're right, but when I read their numbers I think "yeah, looking through the visor of 2011 this could certainly happen".

In order for WP7 to have a significantly smaller market share than the IDC prediction, Nokia will need to totally flop when it comes to selling Windows Phone handsets.

 

[NeilN]

These are the same guys who predicted in June 2008, "Windows Mobile OS phones (will) continue to annually outsell Apple iPhones in both consumer and enterprise shipments, and by 2012, Windows Mobile is expected to double sales over iPhone in the consumer space, and have nearly nine times the amount of enterprise deployment."

http://www.thestreet.com/s/microsof...ooglefi&cm_ven=GOOGLEFI&cm_cat=FREE&cm_ite=NA

Not the completely new Windows 7, but Windows Mobile. Any forecasts beyond 18 months is pretty much crystal ball gazing.

 

[james99]

I don't believe the numbers either but it all hangs on the Nokia piece and how well they do. That's the big unknown.

 

[jvincent]

Why?

Microsoft is offering their OS to all the hardware vendors "out there" and with Nokia, the largest hardware vendor becoming an exclusive Windows Phone partner I don't see these numbers as being unrealistic.

Because there is a very large group of consumer who simply don't think Windows Phone will be any good. They may be wrong, but perception is everything.

Nokia is losing the smartphone handset battle in a big way right now and there are no immediate signs of that changing.

Android has pretty much won the low cost / high volume market.

RIM and Apple are going to duke it out in the enterprise/image driven market.

Windows Phone will need to be either extraordinarily better than all of the above operating systems when it comes to features and user experience and/or delivered on a phone H/W platform that is extraordinarily better than anything offered by HTC/Apple/RIM to get to #2.

I just don't see either of those happening.