Next Four Years in Mobile - Highlights from my brand new forecast

The world is going mobile-first. Apple is the most profitable company in the history of humankind, and is so only because they shifted away from PCs to mobile. Starbucks says mobile is more important to the company's future than coffee beans or location. Yahoo follows Google and Facebook declaring mobile is how they intend to make their profits. NBA the basketball association now says they are 'mobile first'. From hotels to airlines to media, advertising, banking and retail, even government, healthcare and education are all mad about mobile. Mobile is obviously the thing to do.

However, once you get past the initial iSyndrome (Martin Wilson's smart observation that creating an iPhone App is not a substitute for a mobile strategy) what do you do? How many have smartphones vs 'dumbphones'? How many of the 3 Billion global 'internet users' are already on mobile? How much larger is the mobile internet user base than say, the number of people downloading smartphone apps. How much bigger is the reach of MMS than email or Facebook or Whatsapp. And exactly how huge is the reach of the only gorilla in the room, SMS text messaging? Yes you came to the right place. Lets look at the next four years in the mobile industry.

For those who don't know me, welcome to my blog. I am the most accurate forecaster of this industry, the father of many of the statistics and metrics of mobile and this blog is the largest collection of public source statistics and facts about the mobile industry. I have written 12 books for the mobile industry including the book on how this industry makes its money (yes, literally, I wrote 'the' book: m-Profits, global bestseller in 2002). I have a passion for sharing data and stats about this industry both here on this blog that has passed 5 million visitors lifetime (and still no ads! and no registration! and I will not spam you) and at my Twitter feed I have already 14,000 following me. Perhaps the biggest indicator of how I am seen is that 140 books by my peers already quote me in just 13 years from my first book. No wonder Forbes called me the most influential expert in mobile. And yes, now its a time to look at my 'big' comprehensive forecast into the next four years in this industry.

MY BIG FORECAST IS OUT

So yes, three years ago I released a major forecast that was widely references and very well received. Back then I also made a 'highlights' blog entry about major mileposts coming in the next few years. You can go read that blog if you want, I will of course return to that and revisit those forecasts from three years ago, to see how well they compared to the reality. Am I still the most accurate forecaster of this industry? (My regular readers know already...). But yes, this is now the occasion to celebrate the launch of the Tomi Ahonen Mobile Forecast 2014-2018. The next four years in this magnificent industry, the fastest--growing giant industry the planet has ever seen that went from zero to 1 Trillion dollars of annual revenues in only 29 years (most other tech industries never grew to be that big, such as television, personal computers, the internet, etc). So lets take a look at some of the milestones now coming. I have divided this blog into a group of the next 4 years, by year.

MILESTONES COMING IN 2015

This year sees several big milestones we will pass. The mobile handset industry will have its first ever year selling 2 Billion mobile phones (most of them are now smartphones). No consumer tech has ever had that kind of sales levels, not TVs, not PCs, not gaming consoles, not digital cameras, not FM radios, etc. Two Billion sold per year. Thats 5 million phones sold every single day of every week, Saturdays and Sundays included, all the way through all holidays. Thats this industry!

Talking about those handsets and the older PC industry. This year sees the installed base of Android based smartphones grow past 2 Billion in use. Thats more yes than all personal computers including tablets, on all operating systems they use (mostly Windows obviously). This year sees the overall handset (dumbphone and smartphone) installed base pass the level where half are operated by touch-screen (as many 'featurephones' are also touch-screen operated like the Nokia Asha series of featurephones/dumbphones).

And if you are into the smartphone apps industry (mostly a barren desert where if you don't do games, you really won't make much money) then yes, this year we pass the level where 2 Billion people download apps to smartphones. That may seem like a big number until you understand the full mobile industry. Its far smaller than say mobile internet users or cameraphone users or MMS users or gosh, SMS text messaging users. But yeah, nice number, 2 Billion, why not. (for those not knowing the math behind apps, yes its a hopeless barren desert for anyone who isn't a game developer and game developers of course only have a 1 in 10 chance of succeeding. Large user numbers is not much money in apps).

MILESTONES COMING IN 2016

Next up: next year. By 2016 we will see more milestones. For example 3 Billion people will be using mobile search. Yeah. Today there are exactly 3 Billion internet users (and not all of them use search). But by the end of next year, just search users, on mobile, will pass the 3 Billion level. And you doubted Google's interest in mobile, haha.. Its like I teach in my workshops around the world, The Truth Is In The Pocket. At the end of next year 50% of all phones in use on the planet are smartphones.

The balance of SMS text messaging revenues reaches the tipping point, as person-to-person messaging keeps shifting to 'OTT' service providers like Whatsapp, in 2016, half of total SMS revenues worldwide will come from 'premium SMS' ie A2P and P2A (Application to Person, and vice versa) services. What do I mean? Vote for American Idol on TV, get a security code on a web service, pay for a drink on a vending machine, get an airline boarding pass, open a public pay toilet door, get a bus ticket, send a donation to a charity, make a payment, etc etc etc. Oh, and advertising of course, coupons and offers. Premium SMS. Yes, its already twice as big as 'smartphone apps' today and by 2016 premium SMS will be more than half of total SMS revenues globally. And meanwhile back to those phones, the cameraphone active user base hits 5 Billion next year. Yeah, death to the stand-alone camera business.... (BTW the only place on the planet that gives cameraphone and digital camera stats and digital photography stats is my blog, here)

MORE MILESTONES IN 2017

So lets move to 2017. What do we see there? Smartphone sales hit 2 Billion units per year. Yes. Smartphones. Two billion. And PCs only sell about 500 million per year (if tablets like the iPad are included) or 300 million (if tablets are not included). Both PC and tablet sales have stopped growing in any meaningful way, are essentially flat from now on. But smartphone sales, well, they were 1 Billion in 2013 (990 million actually). And will be double that just four years later, in 2017. What a lovely industry if numbers here double every four years haha...

What do we do with our mobiles then? Well, 2017 becomes the first year when mobile 'data' revenues exceed mobile voice revenues globally. Thats a nice shift for us and opens massive opportunities. Talking of those massive opportunities, OTT and SMS. 2017 is the year when OTT instant messaging platforms reach a total user base of 2.7 Billion. Obviously that is not Whatsapp which will be a part of that only. That number, 2.7 Billion again may sound big but in the context of mobile messaging, it really isn't. It is only the half-way point to SMS active user base in 2017 (which will be down a bit from its peak, and be 5.4 Billion active SMS text messaging users in 2017). And to be very clear, Whatsapp today is the most used OTT instant messaging platform that has 700 million users. It is only 1/8 the size of the active user base of SMS text messaging today at 5.6 Billion. Or to put it another way, if you take the total user base of the biggest OTT provider in messaging, Whatsapp, then SMS is merely 8 times larger today. By 2017, maybe SMS will by then only be about 3 or 4 times bigger...

And one more user behavior bit. Internet. Most internet users today access the internet part of the time on a PC (or tablet) and part of the time on a mobile phone (usually smartphone). By 2017, half of the total global internet user base never uses a PC, and accesses the internet only on a mobile. Can you see now why all the majors of the industry are preaching 'mobile first' strategies?

MILESTONES COMING IN 2018

So finally the last year of the Forecast period. What can we look forward to in 2018? The year brings a big milestone for WiFi, as half of all phones in use that year will support WiFi. The average sales price of smartphones falls below 200 dollars in 2018 for the first time ever (with plenty of cheap basic smartphones selling for under 50 dollars but of course also premium smartphones like the iPhones and Galaxies and Xperias will sell in the near 1,000 dollar price levels, so the average is just below 200 dollars, as far more of the cheap phones sell than the very expensive ones).

Android reaches 3 Billion active users just on smartphones (and plenty more on tablets and ultrabooks etc). And of that OS war, I predict in 2018 the market share of new smartphones sold will be Android 82%, iOS is second with 10% and Tizen third with 4%. Firefox has a tiny slice as does Blackberry. Windows if not dead is essentially dead for all practical purposes in smartphones (but Windows of course still holds a big slice of the far smaller PC market even then).

Thats a highlights preview of the next four years. All data in this blog may be freely quoted and used, please list the source as: TomiAhonen Mobile Forecast 2014-2018 and if you can, please do include a link to this blog for more info.. As I said, this is a blog to celebrate my new Forecast just out today. I will return to review the previous Forecast and the mileposts it predicted, how close we got last time. And now about the document itself. The Tomi Ahonen Mobile Forecast 2014-2018 is of course a paid forecast but not one that costs thousands of dollars. As the most accurate forecaster of the industry, I could certainly price it in that kind of range like many of my peers but rather, I am perfectly happy to sell that at 99 Euros as an eBook and great value to my readers and fans. The Forecast is formatted for the smartphone screen so you can carry the pdf ebook in your pocket at all times and have the major numbers of the industry at your fingertips at all times. If you are involved in mobile, no other document is more valuable to you, than the best map to the near future and as such, a 99 Euro price is a modest price to pay so you won't be fooled again into thinking Windows Phone can get 20% market share or smartphone apps will be worth 90 Billion dollars or the other rubbish that charlatans in this industry have been peddling.

So the TomiAhonen Mobile Forecast 2014-2018 has 100 pages of stats and facts and numbers and charts. It makes 109 separate forecasts with 420 individual data points for the years 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. There are also five scenarios and five annual snapshots (each with 20 main data points of the most relevant data per year). A full table of contents is visible at the website for the TomiAhonen Mobile Forecast 2014-2018. If you do need numbers for this industry, this is the place where to start.

TABLE OF CONTENTS for TOMIAHONEN MOBILE FORECAST 2014-2018

SIZE OF THE INDUSTRY

 - Mobile subscriptions, unique subscribers, second and third subscriptions

 - Handsets ('terminals') in use actual

 - Mobile industry revenues including voice, messaging and VAS/non-messaging data

 - Hardware revenues

CUSTOMERS

 - Penetration rate per capita, as unique users, and among humans alive over age 10

 - Regional subscribers (for each, Total, Unique and Multiple subs) for 8 regions - North America, West Europe, East Europe, Asia-Pacific Advanced, Asia Developing, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America

 - Active base users: Clock and Alarm, Camera, SMS, Advertising, Voice calls, Web Surfing, OTT IM, TV voting, News & Alerts, Search, Downloading, MMS

HANDSETS OVERALL

 - New handset sales in units, smartphones in units, migration rate

 - Smartphones in use & migration rate

 - Installed base of handsets by ability: MMS capability, Bluetooth, Media player, Camera, Memory card slot, HTML browser, 3G, Java/Brew, WiFi, used handsets (second hand handsets), touch screen

 - Average camera resulution

 - Input method Touch Screen, QWERTY, hybrid and basic

HANDSET MARKET SHARES

 - Market shares of new sales: All handsets, dumbphones, smartphones

 - Smartphone OS Forecast Base Case and 5 scenarios (Tizen upside, Tizen death, Apple expands to lower prices, Blackberry recovery, Microsoft return)

 - Regional OS market shares for 8 regions - North America, West Europe, East Europe, Asia-Pacific Advanced, Asia Developing, Middle East, Africa, and Latin America

MOBILE DATA SERVICES

 - SMS users, traffic, revenues, premium SMS

 - OTT Cannibalization of messaging by traffic and by users

 - MMS users, revenues

 - Mobile VAS (non-messaging premium data) users, revenues

 - Mobile users of internet, PC users of internet, Mobile-only users, PC-only users, Both Mobile & PC users of internet

 - Mobile service revenues for TV & video, mobile social networking, news & alerts, gaming, advertising

SMARTPHONE APPS

 - Consumer app revenues, business app revenues

 - App revenues in context of VAS and messaging revenues

CUSTOMER TYPE

 - Consumer & enterprise/business subscriptions

 - Consumer & enterprise/business smartphones

 - Prepaid vs Postpaid customers

ANNUAL SUMMARY TABLES

 - One page summaries of the most important 20 mobile stats per year for 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018

 

This is the best one-source resource for you as a guide into the future. It only costs 99.00 Euros and is available immediately as an ebook download. It is formated for the small screen, so you can carry the TomiAhonen Mobile Forecast 2014-2018 in your pocket, on your iPhone or Android or whatever device. It is in basic PDF format so you can also read it on your other digital devices like your PC, laptop and iPad.

If you are involved in any way in the planning and future of mobile, you need this Forecast. Note it costs a tiny fraction of most other forecasts that often sell for thousands of dollars. But you can trust this, as I have been called the most accurate forecaster of the mobile industry, and I am the father of more theories about this industry than any other expert. My 12 published books are already referenced in more than 140 books by my peers, and Forbes measured me as the most influential expert in mobile. My forecasts are regularly quoted in various global media like the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Business Week, the Economist etc, as well as over 500 press mentions in two dozen languages, and I am often seen on TV talking about mobile industry numbers.

 

To see more including full table of contents, please see TomiAhonen Mobile Forecast 2014-2018.

Comments

[Catriona]

@Leebase and Baron95, any thoughts on where wearables will be in 2018? I think it's a safe bet that by then technology will have advanced to the point where there will be more "independent" wearables (perhaps even an Apple Watch with LTE capabilities, but Apple will be the last of the major designers to get there). I know Tomi thinks it is a flash in the pan, but that's not how Apple is treating it. If they thought it were a fad, they'd have flooded the market with a bunch of Apple Watch Sport watches and called it a "hobby" after that. I think Apple Watch will be a game changer since it will get the category noticed. Plus others will start going after the fashion angle, as well (the watch makers will have an easier time with this, provided Google accommodates them with Android Wear).

A wearable, certainly one with LTE support, qualifies as a "mobile" device in my opinion. Even if it's a smashing success it will still be a fairly small part of mobile, but it could have a noticeable effect. Although the current watches, including Apple Watch, don't "do" anything that the cell phone does not, because of the form factor and where it is (attached to your body and not in a purse or pocket), how people interact with it and use it will be different. I think NFC payments and messaging are the more obvious use cases. The Apple PR machine has gone so far as saying it significantly reduces the amount of time people actually take their phones out.

[baron99]

FYI, who is the big dog and how things change. Notice in very short time apple displaced microsoft. This is a VERY interesting perspective over 35 years:

http://fortune.com/2015/04/03/chart-of-the-day-35-years-of-ibm-microsoft-and-apple/?xid=yahoo_fortune

And, the following comment has nothing to do with the chart reference (above) but I have too say it ..for the astroturfers ...just because it is too much fun to annoy them, you know: "Moore's law", "wait for", "all in" and other such nonsense found repeated over and over again for years, in this blog.

..NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE! :-)

[Spawn]

I not see Tizen gaining fraction anytime soon too. 4% of *smartphones* is still a high number and I have doubts Samsung is going to push Tizen on *smartphones*. The ongoing fail to address the ecosystem problems was, so it seems, accepted as unresolvable. Tizen shifted to *other* smartdevices, out of competition with Android.

Effect is that Tizen is going to lose any direct competition with Android on any smartdevice Android is on. And Samsung doee Tizen for IoT? Heck, I lol out hard seeing that the whole industry does IoT. Android is there already (cars which are IoT premium).

I wis so desperate to see Tizen succeeding. But serious, every year delay, every new strategy-shift, everytime I have to notice that fundamental problems got worse, makes it more clear; Tizen is Samsung's dead horse, killed by management decisions. While it makes sense to keep and drive the dead horse forward its not going to wake uup any time soon, or for that matter, never again.

RIP Tizen.

[Catriona]

@Spawn, I think Samsung's "near-death experience" over the past year basically demonstrated that Google is still the dominant player in the Google Play-equipped Android market, no matter how much market share any one OEM amasses. If Samsung could have created its own ecosystem designed around Tizen it would have, but alas, it can't.

[abdul muis]

@Tomi

"On Xiaomi users 'wanting' Windows? In CHINA? Where Windows Phone never had any kind of traction and there are almost no apps etc, Xbox ecosystem is illegal, etc, there is no life in that Xiaomi project - other than some geeks who for some bizarre reason like Windows (on the PC). Will never be a million users among all Xiaomi even if X sells 100M units per year."

I guess my English is so bad, you don't understand what I wrote.

In March, there's a rumours that the Chinese vendor gonna sell the Windows Phone. Followed by leak of 'proof' of several chinese handset running WP. After the story heat up and elevated, XiaoMi (ex Google) Hugo Bara wrote on his Google Plus that IT WAS MICROSOFT that porting the WP to their phone. XiaoMi has done nothing.

It wasn't about chinese user want WP. Microsoft did it because IT WAS EASIER for them to port the WP to those handset. Because (for example) XiaoMi has unlocked bootloader & an open source OS (based on android) that were posted online, and microsoft can REVERSE ENGINEER the source code.

I was thinking that MAYBE after microsoft find success with xiaomi, microsoft will MOVED ON to Samsung, LG, SONY, and other. Microsoft could blackmail this vendor into letting microsoft create the Windows for this device.

MAYBE... this is the WAY microsoft gonna get out of selling windows phone device...

[Catriona]

Regarding Windows, I wouldn't necessarily be so pessimistic. Let's see how Windows 10 does. The new Microsoft Surface 3 (not the Pro, but the $499 device announced this week) is getting some very good press. It's roughly the size of the iPad 4, is about as fast as the new MacBook, and runs "real" Windows. It is probably the most credible competitor to the iPad yet. In a few years, a phone will be that fast.

Apple publicly scoffs at the notion of one OS for everything, but I think it's more tactical than philosophical. OS X is a niche OS, while iOS has achieved a massive scale. So for Apple, iOS is the future, while OS X is a profitable legacy business that makes sense to support as long as it is bringing in the money. For Microsoft, historically they have been weak in mobile, but strong on the desktop. We are reaching the physical limits of silicon and it isn't a given that Moore's Law will be true much longer. If Microsoft experiences success with the Surface line, it's not so much of a stretch to see that translate into more success in phones, wearables, or whatever comes next. We may not be there yet by 2018, but it could be more evident by then if we are on that path.

[Spawn]

@Catriona

> Google is still the dominant player in the Google Play-equipped Android market

Sure, Google Play is Google. As I predicted last year the biggest competition for Google Android is not-Google Android and with Cyanogenmod we finally see a bigger push for that. Anyhow, Samsung does what Samsung did. Back then when they declined Andy Rubin's offer to buy Android and coperation with Cyanogenmod before the company build around and investment capital is thrown at them en mass.

Samsung was par excelence collecting all the customers Nokia decided to throw off the board while that idiot Elop jumped with his personal backage filled with cash. Samsung did well using the opportunity and just continue what Nokia did, push out products customers buy. Samsung even realized what great opportunities they had with a Meego like strategy and they realized the need to differentiate and keep options from/to Android. Tizen, a certain road to in an independent future, and yet Samsung failed to just drive that road. Today there we are with Android being THE thing present everywhere while that Samsung Tizen team still stands in front of the car talking about the best way to drive down the road. Horrible execution.

> If Samsung could have created its own ecosystem designed around Tizen it would

They did not even try. It took Samsung many years to realize that there platform may need an ecosystem. Only years later, very recently in fact, they realized that developers and ISV's are not just jumping in. An SDK, documentation, native support, standardization of web-API's, stable APIs, developer programs including *devices* for developers happened. And yet this story is still not done, Tizen 3.0 coming and with it yet another new framework and API's to do things.

Tizen is still a moving target. At least it seems finally there may compat to some degree with Tizen 3.0. Ask youself why you hear nobody cry any longer when existing Tizen apps stop to work with newer releases. Maybe because tyere is nobody left at this stage! Have a look at the available apps and compare with what was there in past releases. It was more and the ecosystem is decreasing!

This is what happened. Don't think ISV's not learn and are careful where to invest. Like Microsoft decided to burn there Windows Mobile/Phone/Silverlight/XAML developer-story again and again Tizen did exactly the same. Its a burned platform, unstable, a neverending story of rewrites/adjustments/investments without users, without ROI.

Irony that Samsung does with Tizen what Nokia did with its Meego, WP7, WP8, Nokia Android with Microsoft APIS flip. Then compare that with Android, iOS, Desktop Windoes. Backwards-compatible, a developer-story (SDK,/documentation, devices), compat by design to protect investment and users.

No way Samsung alone can turn this around. To much bridges burned, to much investment lost. Just like with WP there will be very less early investments while the majority waits and waits and ... shifts resources to where users are.

I am not a Tizen hater. I have high hopes they get there act together and can turn around. Even now, after all this years. But I just don't see that happening.

> Let's see how Windows 10 does

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-windows-10-how-the-skus-will-skew/

"ARM-based Windows 10 devices that can't run Win32 apps"

Still two independent app-stories. Only the brand new (means not existing ecosystem) modern/universal apps will work on mobile/arm/etc. If you like to know how non-desktop Windows 10 will do have a look how WP 8 does today/since there are no technical differences that would magically change the outcome.

For x86 Surface, Laptops, Workstations; its Windows 10 desktop. Microsoft still owns like 90% of the desktop and it will probably continue like that for some time to come. Its just that this means 14% market share in devices (including smartphones where all thr grow is) and shrinking future as the desktop mark shrinks future in comparision with the total device market.

There is no happy end in the Windows franchise. But unlike previous years Microsoft adjusts to keep relevant.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/11/satya-nadella-bill-gates-steve-ballmer-microsoft

"Right now, Windows itself is fragmented: applications developed for one Windows device, say a P.C., don’t even necessarily work on another Windows device. And if Microsoft develops a new killer application, it almost has to be released for Android and Apple phones, given their market dominance, thereby strengthening those eco-systems, too."

> If Microsoft experiences success with the Surface line, it's not so much of a stretch to see that translate into more success in phones

Surface are laptops/notebooks. Maybe kind of hybrid touching tablets. A whole different thing to phones. I would rather assume Android going from tablet to laptops/notebooks/hybrids and desktop. But then I Google may have little interest to position Android against Chromebooks. What a shame.

[chithanh]

@Spawn
Chrome OS and Android are already positioned against each other in the low-cost smartbook/netbook segment. While Chrome OS has seen some success and recently lowered the entry price to $149 creating further headache for Microsoft, Android smartbooks remain a niche market. ASUS Chromebook Flip is paving the way for convertibles, hybrids and maybe even tablets running Chrome OS. Compute sticks are another (small) market where Android and Chrome OS are now competing against each other.

And Google is quite far ahead of Microsoft in making their apps bridge the fragmentation between Chrome OS, Android, various Linux distros, even Windows and OS X. Just wait until every Chrome browser ships with the ARC runtime (beta was made public a few days ago).

Writing an app for Microsoft's platform will give you a couple hundred million potential customers (phones and PCs running Windows 8 or later). Writing an app for Google's platform will make you reach an audience of billions, including the PCs running Windows 7. What do you think will see more interest from developers?

[AndThisWillBeToo]

@spawn
"Tizen 3.0 coming and with it yet another new framework and API's to do things."

Haven't we heard this:
WP7.5 is coming with better APIs.
WP8, WP8.1, Windows 10,...

[Per "wertigon" Ekström]

While I do agree that Tizen's API-restucturing is bad news, let's not forget that Android, too, did not get everything right on the first try. IIRC the break between 1.x and 2.x and also 2.x and 4.x were rather bad.

The problem however is that Android, now, has stabilized. It's like the World of Warcraft problem - WoW was really bad in it's first iterations, and very bare-bones. However, as things improved in WoW, other MMORPGs releasing a bare-bones version vill quickly find noone cares enough - unless the universe is already known/popular, like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter.

So any OS being released now, won't be able to gain traction unless it puts the years of manhours it took to create Android, iOS or WinPhone today - and does so "stealthily" which is really, really hard to do. A big enough secret will leak to the press eventually.

And even if you get that, you still need carrier support, so... Yeah. Chances of success is < 0.1% if at that.

[chithanh]

Tomi's Tizen predictions are very optimistic, perhaps too much so. Samsung regards Tizen as their property, and lets others play with it if they don't get in its way. As long a this doesn't change, Tizen's uptake will be minimal.

Remember the Tizen app competition? There wasn't even an actual phone you could buy to test your apps on. The competition's deadline even had to be extended, presumably due to lack of quality submissions. Then Samsung delayed again their Tizen phone, citing the immaturity of the app ecosystem.

Tizen on IoT devices is just a temporary fad. Like Android and Windows too, they must show presence in IoT news stories. When IoT is no longer the latest hotness, things will go back to normal.

That being said, Microsoft won't do much better. Their efforts to port Windows Phone to Android devices clearly show where things are heading. I predict that Microsoft will leave the loss-making phone hardware business (maybe have a token device each year built in China and launched alongside Surface), and instead make their software run on devices originally designed to run Android. Phone makers will then be "encouraged" with patent threats to offer Windows phones. Unifying Windows and Windows Phone under the Windows 10 umbrella, and gradually letting support for older phones expire, is the most likely face saving exit strategy I can currently see.

[baron99]

I suspect most of any good patents Microsoft has date back to where they have or will expire shortly (and it's debatable how good they were to begin with - any substantial court tests that validate their value found?, or is this all bluster (by both sides) to get to cross licensing deals on these IP activities (or Microsoft simply picking on little guys that don't have the financial resources to defend themselves so its cheaper to pay). As the big "relevant" mobile players move the mobile frontier boundaries forward they will, mostly by being first, discover and resolve the next generation of important/good patents. The "so called" patent play for Microsoft is quickly coming to an end. ...if you could ever believe it even existed based on Microsoft's never ending PR BS and astroturfer comments.

BTW, NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE! :-)

[sve]

Next 4 years mobile prediction - ok I'll pontificate. I believe iWatch won't be big, even though another 4 years of Moore's Law will give its chips another 4X in power. Even if wifi/radios/battery life will be fine and allow for an untethered iWatch, the unfixable problem is it will still have just too small of a screen.

My prediction is that a new "very widescreen" mobile device will enter, at least at the high end: augmented reality (AR). In the form of something like heads up glasses like Hololens or Magic Leap. The hardware should just about be ready for a first consumer introduction. And I think the public will be ready for a new highly portable formfactor with a wider display, and an alternative to a pocketable 5" slab of glass you have to squint to read. And I predict unlike Google Glass which sported a tiny display in the lower right hand corner of your field of view, a full 180 degree computer graphic overlay will capture people's imaginations and pocketbooks.

[Spawn]

@chithanh

Thanks, as usual some very great comments from you :-)

> Chrome OS and Android are already positioned against each other

By its (opensource and free) nature Android enables exploring into new segments. So, sure are there offers for Android on netbooks/laptops, game-consoles, Android on Windows, etc. Yet, there is close to zero push from Google & OHA-partners. Compare that with ChromeOS where indeed lot happens.

ARC is a prime example of the strategy to push ChromeOS since it gives a much closer web/google-frame. No doubts does the new post-Rubin strategy moving ChromeOS and Android closer together mean fading out Android in favor of ChromeOS. From native client to ARC all pragmatic moves to make that happen.

> Android smartbooks remain a niche market

I think there is demand, demand way beyond smartbooks. Android at desktops/workstations, Android for production rather then consumption. I think there is zero interest from Google to push this, cause of ChromeOS, and thats a huge shame. And so it goes that Intel's work on Android-x86 is still, as of today, inofficial with little options to ever make it upstream. Politics at work.

> What do you think will see more interest from developers?

We are living in a mobile first world. All the (ex-)x86 titans, IBM and Microsoft and Intel, do breath mobile first this days while none of them cashcows on that yet. Hard to find more confirmation of where the priorities, customers, grow and money are this days. That rethorical question of yours was answered long ago and its not in favor of pre-Satya Microsoft whats why we are in a post-Ballmer area now.

@AndThisWillBeToo

> "Tizen 3.0 coming and with it yet another new framework and API's to do things."
> Haven't we heard this:
> WP7.5 is coming with better APIs.

Tizen doesn't active market them burning there own ecosystem as something positive that magically turns around the fail into a success over night. They just do burn, again and again, and are immune to feedback.

I think its caused by cultural differences that prevent upper management from reaching sane conclusions by input from lower or even outside hierachies. The downside of keeping face at work.

@Per "wertigon" Ekström

> the break between [Android API's in] 2.x and 4.x

Android ships with well working API compat libs. From a dev-pov there was no incompatible break between 2.x and 4.x. Apps continue to run.

Google and Apple learned a great deal of the master of backwards-compatiblity, Microsoft win32, how to do ecosystems. They heavy invest keeping compat and it works out.

[Henrik N]

Interesting reading. About Microsoft in mobile, I actually think Nadella are pragmatic. We see all Microsoft/Windows services coming to Android and iOS now.
In a different way than Ballmer would have handle things.
If Windows(Phone) 10 will be a failure I would not be suprised if Microsoft would go Android all the way in mobile as a "plan B".
Android apps on Windows or handsets with Android AOSP.
(Someting similar like the Nokia X Android)

My guess are they trying Windows 10 maybe around 6 months, if nothing happend in marketshare I have no doubt Nadella and the Microsoft board members will deal with it.

[baron99]

Let's see ...hmmm somehow moving "crappy apps" from windows to android is supposed to save Microsoft in mobile ...pretty funny stuff. It's clearly a desperation in response to the fact that NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/03/12/the-real-reason-windows-phone-has-struggled.aspx

[baron99]

You got to wonder why people are so willing to swallow and repeat (over and over and over ad nauseum) all the microsoft PR, which has been shown to be a "parade of BS" for years on this blog by Tomi. Let's face it" Many of the posters are either astroturfers or just plain dumb?

This so called windows on android devices is a "if they build it, will people come?" strategy is a joke and you know it!

Lets get real "how likely (or unlikely) would Microsoft be to see any significant market penetration with a third-party Android ROM? After all, these are people who purchased an Android device because... they wanted an Android device, not a Windows Phone."

If the crappy Windows OS and windows phone apps are indeed the biggest deterrent keeping consumers away from the platform, then "offering it as a flashable alternative doesn't seem like it would be all that effective; seemingly more promising would be following the BlackBerry path of bringing Android app compatibility to the existing platform and hardware."

Most importantly, "there's the not-insignificant obstacle of actually getting people to flash their devices, which is both technically-challenging as well as, in many cases, warranty-breaking. It's hard to imagine swarms of Android owners taking the risk of rooting and flashing their phones just to play around with a new and different operating system." A crappy OS with crappy apps at that!

"This scenario is just a pipe dream, extrapolated from a pilot program that even Microsoft itself is not keen on highlighting. There are a million ways that this initiative could die a quick death, meaning that the path to Windows-on-Android is paved with obstacles and landmines"

This is clearly desperation for microsoft because NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE. and more and more it's looking like NO ONE WANTS WINDOWS. Now you can't even give it away. :-)

[AndThisWillBeToo]

Firefox OS seems to be a good bet for 2018. It shipped 2 million phones in full year 2014, according to Gartner.

http://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-to-open-first-world-front-in-firefox-os-war/

It's been around for two years and is lucky its market share rounds up to 0.2% instead of 0.1%.

[Henrik N]

The statement:NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!
Not really correct, yes they are a small player compared with others.

Look at the numbers in Europe:

http://wmpoweruser.com/windows-phone-back-over-10-market-share-in-europe-in-latest-kantar-numbers/

Android of course the big winner. I have no idea if Windows(Phone)10 will change much.
But its not dead yet.

[baron99]

By Tomi's numbers, which can be trusted. WP is the walking dead ...and NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!

The stupidity of many of the posts about windows is just laughable repetition of microsoft talking points. I don't believe a lot of the astroturfers even know what an OS is or is supposed to do. Basically it is a resource allocator between hardware and applications (among other minor functions). Hardware and applications are what the customer values and cares about! ...not the OS! The phone has to do something FOR THE CUSTOMERS not microsoft!

There is no real value to the crappy and buggy windows OS to the consumers, device manufacturers and app developers. Windows is worthless! That's the fun part watching the microsoft of the past ruin the microsoft of the future. I can't tell how entertaining it is to watch these brain dead monopolists struggle and put up a years long stream of total BS PR (astroturfers and all - just ask the Minnesota attorney general about all the dead people buying their products and writing letters of support and recently masquerading as Apple employees in an Apple store - yeah, great ethics).

Windows is irrelevant! Windows is nothing more than (at this point) a very feeble attempt at trying to institute a control point for microsoft to (attempt) dominate the mobile market. PEOPLE DON"T EVEN WANT WINDOWS FOR FREE! Think about it: there is no value - and all the monopoly ties to other products, buying app development, channel stuffing, give aways, astroturfing and BS PR in the world will not help it.

Do you seriously think device manufacturers and app developers and users with slow, expensive, buggy, virus laden desk top experiences are going to make the same mistake with mobile that they did on the desk top. Think of all the people screwed over by microsoft in the past (recently Nokia). Many are still in the industry and remember. This is just more of the same microsoft BS, and quoting from their "Windows Mobile Website" has no relevance.

It has been true for YEARS: NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!

...BTW, thanks for repeating my statement that NO ONE WANTS A WINDOWS PHONE!. People need to be reminded :-)