Believe it or not, IDC, which claims to be a premier global market intelligence company has predicted in its latest research, revised from March, that the Windows Phone 7 platform will overtake the market share of the iPhone by 2015. In fact under the figures, the iPhone market share would decrease with Android taking the lead with 43.8% in 2015.
Whether the IDC"s predictions will come true is anyones guess, but at a time when the platform hasn"t been selling as well as some would have hoped, and stories of shops not providing demonstration models of WP7, the prediction looks somewhat unlikely. IDC however mentions on their page for this research that Windows Phone 7 will benefit from the co-operation it would gain from Nokia over the four year period.
We see some other changes in which the IDC tells the story at how Symbian will radically decrease as Nokia"s focus moves to support Microsoft"s platform. The report also mentions the decrease of the iOS and BlackBerry slightly due to being squeezed, essentially, into a smaller area of the market. They place the reasoning for Android"s growth on the popularity it has with phone manufacturers and vendors.
There will no doubt be other predictions for the smartphone market share as the months go on, some which will take into account various factors, and others that will just duplicate the current year"s growth. The industry will no doubt be keeping their eyes peeled on figures like this though as the smartphone market becomes more lucrative.