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Comment by frik | Hacker News Reader

According to IDC the Worldwide Smartphone Market in 2015:

  Android       ...  81.2%
  iOS           ...  15.8%
  Windows Phone ...   2.2%
  Others        ...   0.8%

Worldwide Smartphone Forecast by OS for 2019:

  Android       ...  82.6%
  iOS           ...  14.1%
  Windows Phone ...   2.3%
  Others        ...   0.9%

Source: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS40664915

@downvoter: it's a forcast by the well known IDC, also the current market share (2015) is interesting on its own

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Same 'forecasters' that had WP over 20% in 2015, lol.

http://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/idc21.jpg

When you know nothing about future trends the current state is the best estimate. This explains both predictions.

It's maybe at only 5% in LatAm and that's where I know it's been having relative success.

It is up in the double digits in India.

It's 10 to 13% in European countries like France, GB, Italy and Germany.

Where did you get that number from?

random()

Will Windows Phone/ Windows Mobile be around 2019, as a die-hard WP user, I hope so. I just do not like those icon based OSes.

Windows Phone, if it survives, will eventually become very much like those icon based OSes.

I suspect the Universal Windows Platform will have a significant impact. Especially the ability to dock your phone with an external display/keyboard/mouse. For a large portion of the market it displaces the need for a second computing device. Microsoft is much further along on this front than both Android and iOS.

I've been able to (and have done so) plug my android phone into a usb hub with mouse and keyboard and into a 1080p screen for quite a few years now.

Of course, there's relatively little that truly takes advantage of that set up, and making the user experience more pleasant would make a huge difference, but android understands mouse and keyboard input just fine. Microsoft may be somewhat further along on this front, but I don't think it's as much as you think - the apps that can run in this way are not full windows applications, and there are relatively few of them at present.

It's not just the raw capabilities that are important. This is something Apple has understood for a long time. Microsoft is figuring it out.

>Microsoft may be somewhat further along on this front, but I don't think it's as much as you think - the apps that can run in this way are not full windows applications.

But that is going to soon change as MS is working with Intel to launch Intel powered phones (x86). [1]

Regardless of whether Windows phone succeeds or not, I believe the path they are taking will eventually be where all the OSes will end up. The saying "The best camera is the one that is with you" may hold true for computers in the future.

Imagine hotels & coffee shops offering a dock for rooms/tables and the only thing you need is your phone. Plug it in and voila!, your personalized desktop with all its settings and data. This might even be secure, cost effective and more efficient method for portable desktop.

[1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-launching-intel-pow...

I like the docking concept, but you really can't trust input devices you don't own.

Same applies to FxOS, not the whole stack was open.

Plus people keep forgetting that there aren't any open options for the radio OS.

The Motorola Atrix had an optional attachment that turned it into a "webtop" (basically a laptop case that used your phone as the CPU): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G

> Especially the ability to dock your phone with an external display/keyboard/mouse. For a large portion of the market it displaces the need for a second computing device. Microsoft is much further along on this front than both Android and iOS.

From a software perspective, Android has supported this forever. From a hardware perspective, there've been Android devices where accompanying docking solutions was heavily marketed, though none in the last few years, because its something users keep not really wanting in practice, even if they conceptually like the idea in the abstract.

Plus, a substantial fraction of the price and size of a "second computing device" that's larger than your phone is going to be the display, so docking doesn't really solve much of anything (especially when the devices are all cloud connected.) There's zero friction moving between by Android phone and my 12" tablet -- with BT keyboard and, if I felt like using one, BT mouse. And I could use the BT keyboard and mouse with the phone itself, if I wanted to. Either device could connect to an external monitor via HDMI with an inexpensive adaptor (and either can cast its display via Google Cast.)

What, in practical terms, does docking solve?

Monitors aren't obsoleted nearly as quickly as computer hardware and most consumers have a TV. You can take peripherals you already own and make a 1-plug docking station without significant cost. The lynchpin is user-experience and Microsoft is chasing it directly. Android is just trying to be everything for everyone. The docking stations were pimped by the OEMs without support from the ecosystem. I suspect Microsoft is more aggressively preparing for the death of the laptop/desktop. If only to save themselves from the Innovator's dilemma.

> Monitors aren't obsoleted nearly as quickly as computer hardware and most consumers have a TV.

And most people don't want to dock their computing device to their TV as a monitor; there are uses for TV-as-output device, and they're well-covered by things like Google Cast and similar technologies.

> You can take peripherals you already own and make a 1-plug docking station without significant cost.

Only if I already own peripherals; i.e., if I already have a desktop or a laptop that I use with external peripherals instead of just the built-in interface. And, I only need a "docking station" if those peripherals are wired, rather than, say, Bluetooth.

Which might be the case for the monitor, sure, but you can already do that. HDMI dongles or cables -- the only one-plug docking station you need in a world with Bluetooth mice and keyboards -- are readily available and not expensive for existing, non-Windows mobile devices.

I may have misunderstood the ethos of your original comment. Physical docking is likely transient. My comments are directed more towards 2019 and "universal" applications. I took docking to mean: The single action process by which you connect a complete set peripherals to your phone/tablet.

I think it's supposed to be cheaper to own one powerful device + screen and keyboard, than having to buy two separate powerful device.

Microsoft continues to shoot itself in the foot here. Nearly two years ago at BUILD they announced universal apps for Xbox One. A year later the new term, Universal Windows Platform (UWP), was being used and another promise of opening up Xbox to app developers. Xbox has yet to really open up for app devs.

The second leg of UWP's 'write a single app and have it go everywhere' was mobile. We've all seen how that's been going.

The final (and biggest/main) leg is traditional Windows. They whiffed badly with the Windows RT devices. Now all the tablets are running the full-blown OS. That means they all run Win32 apps.

Win32 is good enough so why would a developer port their app to UWP when the first two legs are either unavailable or have a very small install base of customers?

> Win32 is good enough so why would a developer port their app to UWP when the first two legs are either unavailable or have a very small install base of customers?

All the new APIs since Windows 8 are only available in WinRT.

For example, the upgrade path to MFC is XAML, which is only available for WinRT applications.

What is it that makes you a die-hard WP user? As someone who works for a company with mobile applications, we've had a hard time seeing the value in this platform and I'd like to change that.

As an app developer, the lack of users makes WP uninteresting. But it has a slick, original interface and visual style, that has manage very smooth animation on even slow hardware, so it should be no wonder that there are people who fall in love with it.

So install an Android launcher that doesn't use icons. They are available.

Bizarre that this opinion got downvoted, but I agree. It would be nice to have a thriving ecosystem of mobile OS's. I'm a WP user also and will be going Android for my next go round, maybe iOS after that. Would have been nice to try Firefox OS after that.

The UI can be changed on Android and there are a lot of launchers which has a windows phone style:

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=windows+launcher&c=ap...

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