iSuppli: 'Reports of Windows Mobile's death are greatly exaggerated'

No doubt lots of people are clamoring at the notion that "Windows Mobile is dead" (evidently this crew has moved on from mocking Palm) and what with Motorola on WM hiatus, Palm parting ways, the eternal delay of WM7 and the perhaps too-little-to-late Windows Mobile 6.5, it is easy to see why.

On the other hand there is the stark reality: Microsoft has a lot of licensees (14 to be exact), including most recently LG, which is committed to a reported 50 devices in the next few years. HTC has lots of hits with its Touch series and their increase in market power is unrelenting.

To back this up, iSuppli, which performs market analysis, came out with a report stating that though Microsoft is down right now, it is poised for a strong comeback. It is predicting "a 15.3 percent share of the global market in 2013, second only to the Symbian operating system, which will control 47.6 percent." Basically they're going to bounce from No. 2 to No. 3 this year and back to second-place by 2012.

Expanding on this, Tina Teng, a senior analyst at iSuppli, goes on to correctly note

“To win in today’s environment, a company needs not only an operating system but also device support, an application store, a broad portfolio of applications and support from the developer community. While Windows Mobile is losing some share to competitors in 2009, most of the alternatives cannot match Microsoft’s complete suite of offerings.”

This isn't too hard to fathom either with Ballmer revamping the Windows Mobile team and making it the second top priority for the company. Heck, look at all the Live services (Bing, Mesh, MyPhone), tech previews (Recite, Deepfish), Marketplace, the Chassis-1 specifications, the Orion project, TellMe, gesture navigation, non-touch gestures/Side Sight, Silverlight, free automagic-ness and Windows Mobile 7 looks to be a monster OS with very advanced technology. Now combine all of that with 14 hardware manufacturers, market presence, integration with Windows 7, Xbox and that Zune HD thing. Ka-ching.

Microsoft has all the pieces, now it just has to merge them all into a unified and compelling OS.  One year from now we thing will be very interesting times.

CATEGORIES
Phil Nickinson

Phil is the father of two beautiful girls and is the Dad behind Modern Dad. Before that he spent seven years at the helm of Android Central. Before that he spent a decade in a newsroom of a two-time Pulitzer Prize-finalist newspaper. Before that — well, we don't talk much about those days. Subscribe to the Modern Dad newsletter!

Latest in Windows Phone
Windows Phones
Windows 10 Mobile’s app store bites the dust, half a decade after support ended
Lumia 950 XL
The director for one of 2025's best games was a Windows Phone fan, says Microsoft was "shocked" that he was voluntarily using it — I experienced similar
Lumia 1020 case with an iPhone SE (Gen 3) inside
Windows Phone revived: Tech Enthusiast "upgrades" Lumia 1020 with full-fledged iOS
Launcher 10 being used to make a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra look like a Windows Phone.
Here's how to turn your Android Phone into a 'Windows Phone' in 2024
POCO X3 Pro closeup shot featuring the back of the device.
Windows Phone in 2024?! Not exactly, but this is close.
iPhone home screen
Apple adding this feature to iOS 18 in 2024 is so basic it hurts my brain, and it makes me miss Windows Phone
Latest in News
Cloud servers
Microsoft has killed "several" data center projects in the U.S. and Europe, according to reports
Photo of Microsoft's new sign-in page for Xbox.com using the Microsoft Edge browser.
Over one billion users will get a new Microsoft user experience, and it has a dark mode
The Thing: Remastered key art
The Thing comes to Xbox Cloud Gaming's "Stream Your Own Game" library alongside other new arrivals
Promotional screenshot of heroes fighting a giant in Pillars of Eternity
Obsidian's classic Baldur's Gate successor 'Pillars of Eternity' is getting a surprise turn-based mode later this year, alongside other updates
Atomfall
Atomfall reviews and Metacritic scores are in: Here's a roundup of what everyone's saying about this new Game Pass survival game
Screenshot of one of the new flat world presets in Minecraft.
Minecraft testing new flat world presets and a better way to locate your friends in-game