Windows Phone Expected to Double Its Market Share by 2018

Android and iOS continue to rule the smartphone market and forecasts do not predict any changes in the following 3 or 4 years. Even though the market share of both operating systems won’t suffer major changes, there’s one platform that will continue to grow steadily and that’s Microsoft’s Windows Phone.

With the release of Windows Phone 8.1 Developer Preview and the new wave of smartphones powered by the new platform, Microsoft’s mobile operating system is likely to gain a lot of traction by the end of the year.

According to a recent mobile phone forecast published by IDC (International Data Corporation), Windows Phone’s market share will be the only one that will grow significantly in the next couple of years.

If Microsoft’s mobile platform keeps the momentum, its growth is expected to outpace the market throughout the forecast period. IDC’s forecast predicts that in 2014, volumes are expected to grow 29.5% over 2013, reaching 43.3 million shipments.

This will only be the beginning, as Windows Phone’s growth is expected to continue next year, when IDC forecasts that shipments of Windows Phone devices will reach 65.9 million units.

By 2018, Windows Phone should reach 115.3 million units shipped, which is the equivalent of 6.4% market share. Considering that Microsoft’s mobile platform now sits at only 3.5% market share, Windows Phone could almost double its market share by the end of 2018.

The big loser could be Android, though given the already huge share that the operating system currently has (80.2%), it’s hard to say that it will lose any market share at all.

IDC predicts that Android will drop from 80.2% market share in 2014 to “only” 77.6% in 2018, which doesn’t mean anything for Google’s platform.

Worldwide smartphone forecast by region, shipments, market share and 5-year CAGR (units in millions)

On a side note, IDC predicts that BlackBerry will almost disappear from the market as a mobile operating system. With a market share of only 0.3%, the Canadian company’s OS is likely to fade into nothingness by 2020 if nothing major happens.

Keep in mind that these are just forecasts that do not take into consideration any unforeseeable event that could have a major impact on any of the major mobile platforms available on the market. However, if nothing big happens, the numbers mentioned in the statistics should be accurate enough.