Sunday, October 22, 2006

Microsoft to dominate mobile? They do not think so

I was looking at an article today titled "Microsoft sees fast growth in Windows phones: report" and I started to wonder a bit about "fast growth" and control of the market by Microsoft.

Some people - just the ones that do not know/understand mobile ;-) - are telling me that Microsoft will dominate this market as they dominated the PC market (BTW, I just bought the third Mac laptop for my employees because they asked for it and I could not find one single reason to say no...).

I do not think Microsoft will dominate mobile, sorry. They do not think it either...

Check the numbers: they had 6M devices last year with Windows Mobile. They plan to grow 100% this year. It looks like a big number... That's 12M devices. Maybe they will do 100% next year and the following one. That's 48M devices at the end of 2008. Wow.

In Q3 of this year, there were 245M phones shipped worldwide. We'll have 1B (one billion) phones shipped in 2006, still growing in the next two years.

If Microsoft is right and they make their numbers, they will have about a whopping 3% of the mobile market by the end of 2008. Apple is at 7% today on the PC market... Is Apple dominating the PC market??