The International Data Corporation released a new forecast for the global smartphone market in 2015 with projections for 2019. In their forecast, IDC is predicting that Microsoft’s Windows Phone will grow from its 2.6% market share in 2015 to 3.6% in 2019. IDC adds that their “view that Microsoft/Windows Phone will remain a marginal challenger at best has not changed.”
The forecasts also predict that Android will maintain an 81.1% market share in 2019 and iOS’s share will drop slightly to 14.2%.
Overall, IDC’s biggest news in the report is that they have revised their smartphone forecast for 2015 to predict the market will only grow 10.4% instead of by 11.3% as they previously projected. These numbers are down from 2014’s growth rate of 27.5%. IDC is reporting that multiple markets (China, North America, and Western Europe) are in a more mature growth pattern and that there will be a noticeable slowdown in smartphones.
With other markets’ growth slowing, India may be the next big focus for smartphone manufacturers as IDC’s Ryan Reith notes that:
“India has captured a lot of the attention that China previously received and it’s now the market with the most potential upside. The interesting thing to watch will be the possibility of manufacturing moving from China and Vietnam over to India. We’ve begun to see this move as a means to cut costs and capitalize on financial benefits associated with localized India manufacturing.”
This may serve to benefit Microsoft as we have previously reported the technology company is already placing big bets on India and other reports have said that Microsoft may be moving production of Windows Phone to India. However, IDC must not see it as such as their projections are certainly nothing to get excited about with market share remaining in the low single digits, only marginally improving.
What do you think is Microsoft’s best shot at increasing market share so that Windows 10 Mobile is a success? And what would success look like, 5%, 10%, 15% market share? Let us know what you think in the comments section below.
