05-14-2008, 12:00 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Microsoft Eyes 40% Share Of Mobile Device Market By 2012
"Microsoft is aiming to capture 40 percent of the smartphone market with Windows Mobile by the year 2012, an executive said Tuesday. The target is ambitious considering the company's relatively small share of the market for smartphone operating systems today and stiff competition from the likes of Symbian, Apple's iPhone, RIM's BlackBerry, and newcomers such as Google's Android platform. "
Microsoft is betting that new devices like the HTC Touch Diamond will help it in the consumer space and server products like Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager will help it in the enterprise space. Do you think 40% is in their reach by 2012, when today Nokia has nearly 70% share compared to Microsoft's 13% share. I remember a time not too long ago when Microsoft's main mobile rival had 80% share compared to MS's 10% share.
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05-14-2008, 12:48 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 471
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I think it's a good target but massively ambitious.
Microsoft has been in the smartphone game for a long time now. It has never managed to grab more than about 15% of the market - and that was with just underdogs like Symbian and Palm as its rivals. With Apple and Google now entering the smartphone race, I can't see Microsoft ever gaining 40%. Microsoft would need to buy RIM or Nokia to do it!
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05-14-2008, 12:59 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 403
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed Hansberry
Do you think 40% is in their reach by 2012, when today Nokia has nearly 70% share compared to Microsoft's 13% share.
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No, I do not, unless MS bought one of the companies like the previous poster mentioned, or RIM was the target of a terrorist attack by Al Qaeda and completely wiped off the map overnight.
The only way I ever see MS getting that much of a share would be to get better control of the devices that WM is going on and improving the OS/user experience dramatically.
In spite of the iphone, RIM is doing some impressive things right now and I personally feel that they will be the force to be recond with over the new several months.
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05-14-2008, 01:19 PM
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Philosopher
Join Date: Oct 2006
Posts: 554
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Sure, it is possible that MS will get 40% of the market share. That is if they count on licensing parts of WM OS such as Active Sync, Exchange Server, etc. To win consumers over from RIM, Apple, MS needs to do something really dramatic with their OS, and either force OEMS to build more capable hardware, or take it in its own hands. MS makes Zune, so now maybe Danger can make WM devices as well.
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05-14-2008, 01:43 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Feb 2002
Posts: 197
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It's good to have ambitions. It's even better to have a strategy to make them happen.
Is it possible for MS to capture 40% mobile device market share? Sure. They already did something similar once with DOS/Windows on the desktop. The key was making it work well enough and making deals for it to be placed as the primary or only OS on the hardware. That strategy gave rise to the current anti-trust suits that would make a similar strategy less possible now.
Is it likely that they'll figure out a way to do it? I'm not so sure. They seem to have some difficulty figuring out a good strategy and sticking with it. They're currently losing market-share in Windows at least in part because of conflicting strategies.
Would it be a good thing if they did? I'm of mixed minds on this. On the one hand, Windows is the target for software these days because of the overwhelming market-share. It's also the target for viruses and malware for the same reason. The competition between alternatives usually forces a faster rate of improvements. That's good for the consumer because we get more functionality but bad because you "need" to upgrade more often, with the associated expenses and re-learning time. Who wants to buy a new phone every two years only to find that some of your data and most of your add-ons won't work on or transfer to the new one?
There are also expenses associated with buying "the wrong standard" before the competition shakes out. People with AMD SLI motherboards and with HD-DVD players know what I'm talking about.
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05-14-2008, 06:02 PM
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Contributing Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 8,228
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Stinger
I think it's a good target but massively ambitious.
Microsoft has been in the smartphone game for a long time now.
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I don't think they have. 2002 was the first phone device for them and it was late 2002 at that. The 2003 models from 2003-2004 were still very early and the "Pocket PC Phones" were strictly for geeks with the menu structures the way they were. WM5 is when it really changed - soft keys and no losing your data when the battery died.
Still, add it ALL up and the the most you could say they have been it it is 5.5 years. Now long as Nokia been in it? And RIM? Not sure when RIM started, but I know they were around in 2000 or 2001 at the latest, and MS is ahead of RIM. I also think Nokia's numbers are a bit inflated. How many of the smartphones are they selling that are freebies that the user never goes beyond SMS or maybe MMS with?
It is ambitious, but to go from zero to 13% in 5-6 years isn't bad., especially when only the last 3 years were when MS got a lot of it right - not everything, but a lot. :-)
To go from 13% to 40% only requires tripling share. They have been doubling every few years lately. To triple in 5 years? Ambitious but not impossible or even unrealistic.
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05-14-2008, 07:07 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 40
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I think its quite ambitious, but not unachievable.
All the people I know who got iphones returned them because they found them too difficult to type messages on. This being Asia, where SMS messages are the craze, might also be a factor.
Google's Android, while impressive on paper, hasn't seen the light of the day and apart from minor improvements, I can't see it being overly feature rich over WM.
MS has to tread a careful path here with WM7. They need to make sure that they lower the boom on these smartphone companies with it.
WM is really not for experts at PPC anymore. I gave a WM Standard phone to my mom (the HTC S620) and she loves it. She won't use any other phone over it and was asking me if any other phones were like it (for an upgrade path). And its not like she's tech savvy. The only other phones she's used have been low end Nokias.
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05-14-2008, 07:20 PM
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Thinker
Join Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 471
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Quote:
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Still, add it ALL up and the the most you could say they have been it it is 5.5 years. Now long as Nokia been in it? And RIM?
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The first Nokia S60 phone was released in Q2 2002 according to Wikipedia. The first Blackberry with integrated voice was released in Q2 2003. Microsoft has been in the game as long as the other players.
I guess you could argue that Nokia has been making phones for far longer and Blackberry have been making e-mail devices for far longer. But how long has Pocket PC been around?
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How many of the smartphones are they selling that are freebies that the user never goes beyond SMS or maybe MMS with?
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I would assume that a large portion of Nokia smartphone users are taking photos, listening to music and browsing the web. That's certainly what I see on the streets. Sounds like another certain consumer-centric smartphone platform, doesn't it?
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It is ambitious, but to go from zero to 13% in 5-6 years isn't bad., especially when only the last 3 years were when MS got a lot of it right - not everything, but a lot. :-)
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Symbian went from zero to 70% in an instant and has stuck around that figure ever since. Apple managed to grab 27% of the US market in only a few months. Windows Mobile is certainly improving but so is the opposition.
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To go from 13% to 40% only requires tripling share. They have been doubling every few years lately. To triple in 5 years? Ambitious but t impossible or even unrealistic.
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Microsoft's sales have been doubling but I haven't seen any real increase in market share. Their market share has always floated around the 8-20% mark. As I said, Microsoft is improving but so is the competition around them. In such a competitive market, you need to improve fast just to stand still. Just look at Motorola's fall from grace.
A tripling of market share does not equal a tripling of sales. It's probably more like getting twelve or even sixteen times as many sales.
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05-14-2008, 08:00 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Mar 2006
Posts: 107
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If the past six months that I have spent using an AT&T Tilt are any indication, Microsoft has a LOT of work ahead of them if they expect to come anywhere close to 40% of the market.
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05-14-2008, 11:35 PM
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Pupil
Join Date: May 2008
Posts: 32
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40% is not that realistic imho because of the iPhone, the Linux-enabled phones and Google's Android.
But with services like the Mesh, Windows Mobile could remain the thing for most of the users by 2012 
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