Windows Phone (including Windows 10 Mobile) is a platform that’s rapidly losing ground these days, and a forecast published by analyst firm IDC estimates that this decline would continue in the coming years until the operating system eventually reaches 0.0 percent market share in 2021.
Windows Phone is expected to drop to 0.1 percent market share this year, which represents 1.8 million phones out there, but the share is projected to drop to 0 percent by 2021 when only 800,000 Windows phones would remain on the market.
On the other hand, IDC estimates that Android would continue to lead the market, jumping from 1.3 billion phones this year to 1.5 billion units in 2021, with a market share of 85.3 percent. Apple’s iOS would increase from 226 million phones in 2017 to 258 million in 2021, while market share should drop from 14.7 percent to 14.6 percent.
As far as Windows Phone is concerned, IDC says the decline is happening mostly because the majority of OEMs already abandoned the platform and Microsoft barely shows any intention to work with partners on bringing new devices to the market.
“Windows Phone continues to decline as a share of the smartphone space as many OEMs have given up producing phones for the platform. As a result, IDC expects 2017 volumes to decline 69.5% to just 1.8 million units. It is unclear at this time if Microsoft has a clear plan to persuade OEMs to get back on board with the platform, or if it plans to release a device itself like it did with Surface devices. Until this production question is addressed, IDC doesn’t see a clear path to turning around the platform,” IDC says.
Microsoft is believed to be working on just a single new device called Surface Phone, but its existence is yet to be confirmed. The Surface Phone was originally said to be due in the fall of 2017 or early 2018, but without any official information, nobody can tell for sure if it’s still part of Microsoft’s mobile vision or not.
