The Berg Insight report estimates that total worldwide mobile phone shipments will increase to 1.6 billion units per year in 2012. Smartphone shipments, meanwhile, will grow at a 28 percent compound annual rate, reaching 365 million in 2012.
Berg's dismal outlook for Windows Mobile stands in sharp contrast to other recent market analyses. Last September, for example,
IDC projected that Windows Mobile would capture 32.3 percent of the enterprise market for "converged mobile devices" by 2010. Just over a year ago,
The Diffusion Group (TDG) predicted that Windows Mobile would overtake both Symbian and Linux by 2010, garnering 29 percent of the market, with Linux second at 26 percent and Symbian third at 22 percent.
TDG noted that Microsoft has the advantage of leveraging "tight integration" with its other Windows OS products in both the enterprise and "advanced consumer" markets. Berg, on the other hand, appears to view this as a liability, suggesting that Windows Mobile will likely be limited to business oriented smartphones.
Microsoft, incidentally,
recently predicted that 20 million Windows Mobile 6-based devices will ship in 2008.
Further information on Berg Insight's report, "Smartphone Operating Systems," is available
here.
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