WinMo loses nearly a third of its marketshare

[panamajack]

Pretty dramatic drop for WinMO ... and that's before Android has even approached it's stride.

--
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/ ... 964,00.htm

Windows Mobile lost 28 percent of its smartphone market share between the third quarter of 2008 and the third quarter of 2009, according to analysis from Gartner.

According to figures released by Gartner on Thursday, Microsoft's mobile operating system had 11 percent of the global smartphone market in Q3 2008. A year later, it had 7.9 percent of the market, while the iPhone's share had risen from 12.9 percent to 17.1 percent, and RIM's share had risen from 16 percent to 20.8 percent.

Symbian's market share fell from 49.7 percent to 44.6 percent over the same period — a 10 percent drop.

The open-source Android operating system did not have any market share in Q3 2008, as it had only recently been introduced. In Q3 2009, however, it had a market share of 3.9 percent of the smartphone market. Palm's WebOS had 1.1 percent, and other Linux-based mobile operating systems had 4.7 percent.

Gartner analyst Roberta Cozza, who compiled the figures, told ZDNet UK on Friday that Windows Mobile's share in the smartphone market "continues to be challenged by other platforms".

"From one side, the market is going open source," Cozza said. "We expect that, by 2012, around 62 percent of the whole smartphone market will be open source with Symbian, Android and other Linux flavours. On the other side, they have more closed environments like Apple and RIM. Microsoft is caught in the middle. They have to think hard what they can do."
Cozza suggested that, given the strong emergence of free, open-source operating systems, Microsoft may find it difficult to demand licence fees from smartphone manufacturers. She described the recently introduced Windows Mobile 6.5 as "not a major improvement" on its predecessors, and said the OS's user interface was limited by its reliance on small icons that need stylus, rather than finger, interaction.

"[Windows Mobile] remains well positioned within the enterprise," Cozza noted, but she pointed out that 80 percent of smartphone sales are to consumers.

The analyst said Microsoft would have to come up with something "more competitive and consumer-oriented in 2010 when they announce Windows Mobile 7", but the new operating system would have to be "something pretty drastic" in order to reverse Microsoft's declining market share.

"All their licensees — HTC, Samsung, Sony Ericsson — are developing on Android," Cozza said, adding that previous licensees Palm and Motorola have both abandoned Windows Mobile.

Microsoft had not responded to a request for comment at the time of writing.

 

[mikelove]

Well they're way behind other companies on this, but I still believe they can catch up - Microsoft's only chance of not turning into IBM is do something big in the mobile space. It's not quite as much a make-or-break proposition for them as the iPhone is for Apple - if iPhone dies, Apple does too - but it's a much bigger deal for Microsoft than it is for Google, or even really for RIM (which I believe could keep merrily making keyboard-based BlackBerries with crappy web browsers for the next decade and still remain successful), and with the resources they're now throwing at this problem and the early returns we're seeing in the form of the surprisingly well-designed Zune HD I'm still betting they'll be able to pull off a comeback.

But hey, we're about to be on iPhone too, and it's easy to justify continued WM development even in the face of declining market share because of the imminent prospect of a desktop Windows port, so this isn't as big a deal for Pleco as it would be if we'd spent the last year doing nothing but improving our WM software.

 

[chao-ren]

this is good news for those who want to buy a high end WinMo machine from Samsung/HTC. They will each be trying to get rid off the increasingly unpopular WinMo models at lower prices. Samsung and HTC will increasingly turn towards making machines with other OSes like: linux or Android. WinMo "interface" will eventually be changed to the point where no one can tell the difference between a WinMo and a Linux based mobile phone. A Samsung i8000(Omnia II) runs no better as a fancy phone, than a Samsung Jet. The WinMo i8000 starts out with a higher price but hard to tell what for.

 

[Mao Zhou]

Actually the 11% or whatever share was incorrect. Its been about 7 to 8 percent for as long as I care to remember. There has been juggling in that group so maybe things will improve in the future...

 

[sui.generis]

Well they're way behind other companies on this, but I still believe they can catch up - Microsoft's only chance of not turning into IBM is do something big in the mobile space.

I'm not worried about the long term viability of WinMo at all. And every time I read another sky is falling story, I worry less. MS has taken their licks, and they deserved to. They neglected WinMo and its userbase. But I think they're about to (or already have) hit their floor even before they release winmo7. It's basically a case of almost everyone willing to leave has already left combined with the quality of WinMo handsets really increasing dramatically while techno-pundits are still deriving their winmo experience background from 2007's devices and analysts are fretting about fallout that's more or less already over. And then after WinMo bottoms out, MS still gets a chance to prove its learned all its lessons with WinMo7.

I honestly think that without even an ounce of additional innovation, MS could reassert itself in a big way with a marketing push (highlighting Bing and Live App support is probably not the best way) that demonstrated what it really has to offer right now. People have such a (incorrectly) dim view of the WinMo experience MS can exceed expectations dramatically long before WinMo7 arrives. Remember the laptop hunters ads? One push like that could completely change how non-owners see WinMo.

 

[character]

I don't think it's a question of MS being able to improve WM. MS's problem is that the market has changed. Good web browsing and apps are coming to define the consumer smart phone/app phone market. There are $99 iPhones with 3G. Android is free to phone manufacturers (there's some money changing hands somehow for Google-branded phones with Google apps). Java is a very popular language and it's very easy to use it to develop apps for Android and make them available.

Apple has the lead in a walled-garden model, with over 40 million users (iPhone and iPod Touch) tied to the set of apps they have chosen. I don't see WM 7 going free and open source to compete with Android on price.

Something which should at least be noted is that the Palm Pre seems to have failed, which may be a warning to MS that a popular mobile OS may not get a second chance in this new market.

 

[mikelove]

You don't think Microsoft would make WM 7 free? Heck, it's the rare example of a situation where the DOJ / EU / et al would actually let them get away with that, since Google's doing the same thing. Given the colossal amount of money Microsoft has lost on mobile devices over the last decade or so, I can't imagine they'd balk at forgoing royalty revenue for a release or two, at least until they migrate WM over to the desktop (NT) kernel in Windows Mobile 8/9 - they just want to get back in the game.

The important thing to note about the Pre is that it's a phone on which apps barely matter, and what apps they do have make even iPhone apps look elaborate by comparison. In a way it's a mobile version of Chrome OS before there's an actual mobile version of Chrome OS. If Palm can just hold on for a few years (perhaps with a big corporate parent - given the bad press they've had of late, if there's ever been a time for Nokia to step up and buy them this is it) they may find themselves in a world in which it's once again OK to have a 2% OS marketshare because everything's being done in the browser anyway. And in this their interests are aligned not only with Google's but with those of pretty much the whole computer industry aside from Microsoft and Apple.

WM has a shot thanks to Microsoft's money / brand / desperation / still-formidable technical muscle, webOS has a shot thanks to its lightness / novelty / ease of development, and BlackBerry is only going to decline among consumers but will probably hold on to their insanely-profitable corporate accounts for at least another decade or so (albeit increasingly as someone's "second phone.") So really the only mobile OS for which I don't see a clear path forward is Symbian - there's nothing about it now or in the pipeline that isn't done equally well or better by iPhone / Android, its only reason for existence is Nokia's stubbornness (though I'll take that over having them adopt the evil Android any day). The move to GTK might be one ray of hope, though - easy porting from Linux could give them a nice base of apps assuming they made a real effort to reach out to the open-source community (e.g. by not being too dickish about app approvals / sideloading / etc).

 

[character]

I don't see MS making WM 7 free, because OS-licensing is its cash cow, and that would set a very bad precedent. OTOH, many phones in 2010-11 are going to be essentially equivalent in power/screen res to early netbooks, so maybe MS will whip out Win 7 phone edition.

 

[mikelove]

True, but this is a life-or-death type thing for them - the last time their backs were against the wall like this, they came out with Internet Explorer (also free, also unusually so compared to other browsers at the time) and conquered the web browser market in a few short years. That at a time when it was thought that web browsers would completely replace operating systems by the middle of this decade

More recent instances of MS giving away something they'd normally expect to make a profit on for free to fend off competitors are Virtual PC (anti-VMWare) and the forthcoming free online version of Office (anti-Google Docs), Office incidentally being as big and critical a profit center for MS as Windows is.

I'm not saying it's something they'd like to do, but by the time WM 7 is ready I don't think they'll have any choice.

 

[character]

I think netbooks and cell phones will merge in the next year or two -- pico projectors and virtual keyboards (or some other interface tech) will get rid of the screen/keyboard size issue, so all the hardware will fit in a mobile phone package. MS could really skip WM7 and start refining prototype phones running Win 7. Or Apple could come out with a MacBook Helium. :wink:

My impression is Office was certainly a profit center for them, but it's not like owning the playing field the way owning the OS is. They seemed quite ready to pull Office from OS/2 and Mac (and never released it for Linux) but they seem to defend Windows to the death.

Oh well, we'll know soon enough.

 

[daniel123]

Looking at the HTC HD2 and what I have heard about WM 7 I guess the devices will have capacitive displays and propably they will not support a stylus like their resistive displays are doing today.

If HTC really plans a new kind of stylus for capacitve displays (as some rumor said before) there would be more concrete information until now - after the HD2 was out. I cannot imagine this any longer. Maybe they do not think that a stylus is needed, maybe they cannot realize a stylus that is very precise but working as easy as a finger.

Looking at the last WM devices during last months we can see that a stylus is unwanted by the producers and it seems also by most of the users. More and more devices do not bring a stylus at all. And if there is a stylus that comes with the device it is getting worse and worse. From my point of view this is a pity for pleco users but I am afraid this is the way the things will continue.

So I think in the future for WM7 (or maybe a little earlier because of supporting the HD2) we will probably have a Pleco user interface that is possible to use with fingers maybe similar to the iPhone version designed for WM. But I guess an iPhone version that supports flashcards will be out much earlier than a new WM version that is designed for fingers.

This means WM goes the way where the iPhone already is (or nearly is). I mean this for the OS as well as for Pleco. So if we want a good and modern device that supports Pleco, why should we wait for WM7?

Until today I was not interested in the iPhone version but it looks more and more that WM wants to give up its stylus advantage. And I think if I really have to go without a stylus I prefer an OS that is designed for finger usage than an OS that is neither meat nor fish (like WM 6.5). And I prefer to buy things that are already available instead of waiting maybe one more year (or longer?) like for WM 7.

So it looks more and more that I should not ignore the iPhone any longer.

 

[mikelove]

I don't think WM7 is going to stop being stylus-compatible as much as you suggest; certainly Microsoft is taking steps to make the UI more touch-friendly, but they're still going to have a huge base of existing apps that are designed for stylus-driven touchscreens, and they aren't going to want to stop supporting all of those (if they did, they'd fall behind even webOS / Symbian / Blackberry in the app catalog size race).

But yes, the flashcard-equipped iPhone version should definitely beat out the finger-friendly WM version release-wise; basically we're planning to sync up the next minor update on Palm/WM with the flashcard version on iPhone (so that we can debut the iPhone flashcards with the couple of new features we're adding), and only after that's out do we plan to start work on the bigger 2.1 update, which is the one that will likely bring better finger control support on WM. (whether that's on Palm as well as WM / iPhone is still up in the air)