IDC has good news and bad news for Microsoft’s smartphone ambitions.
First, the bad news: four years from now, Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS will still be eating Microsoft’s lunch in the smartphone market.
The Windows Phone operating system will account for just 5.6 percent of global smartphone sales in 2018, IDC said Monday in the data researcher’s latest forecast. That’s well short of the 15 percent share Microsoft executives said they were shooting for when they bought Nokia’s handset business last year.
The good news: 5.6 percent represents a near doubling from the 2.7 percent share IDC currently estimates for Microsoft. Getting there assumes an annual growth rate of north of 3 percent every year.
The question is whether that growth will be enough to push the phone hardware business from a cash-burning former acquisition to a profitable unit with a long-term place in Microsoft’s lineup of products. Microsoft executives have said they hope to have the phone business, the target of hefty cost cuts and layoffs this year, at least breaking even in the fiscal year that starts next July.
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