Microsoft’s beleaguered Windows Phone platform, the company’s successor to Windows Mobile, sales of which literally collapsed after the iPhone arrived in 2007, is a small and shrinking piece of the smartphone market. Nevertheless, market researcher International Data Corporation is again claiming that Windows Phone will outperform iPhone and rise to become the world’s number two smartphone platform by 2016.
According to All Things D, IDC speculates that the Android will take 53 percent of the market (vs 61 percent today), while iPhone will decline from today’s 20 percent share and Windows Phone, which will benefit mightily from third-world adoption, will shoot up from 5 percent to 20 percent in 2016.
That is just loopy, especially considering that most observers peg Windows Phone’s current share below 5 percent and falling.
But, we’ve been hearing this — for lack of a better descriptor — “crap” for a couple years already.
For example, IHS iSuppli made the similarly absurd projection in January that Windows Phone will rise into the number two smartphone spot by 2015.
There is just so much momentum built into Apple’s product pipeline — even before you consider things like third-party apps, peripherals and carrier support — that it strains credulity to claim with a straight face that Windows Phone is going to beat the iPhone.
Blackberry? Maybe. But not the iPhone…
What’s your take?