Microsoft takes huge bong rip, declares goal of 40% global smartphone market share by 2012

Microsoft’s Managing Director of ODM Embedded Devices for the Asian market, Eddie Wu, has said that by the summer of 2012 the company hopes to have 40% of the global smartphone market. In 2007 Microsoft only managed to reach 13% of the market according to Canalys. Unless they start giving away Windows Mobile I don’t really see how this is going to work, anyone care to chime in on this?

[Via: Digitimes]

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

JG

Zune Phone
Xbox phone
Windows Live phone

and I am out of ways they could possibly achieve this…
James

LOL @ the picture!

I think the real question is: What will smartphone market encompass in 2012? The boundaries between smart, feature and dumb phones seems to be blurring ever more and I suspect by 2012 the only useful metric will be % share of the total mobile phone market.

…in which case MS will need a bigger bong if they expect to have 40% of all phones!
Raidium

I agree with JG. The maybe able to acceive this if they can make a Zune Phone and and Xbox Phone.

Zune phone would compete with the iPhone and be just one big media player that can make phone calls. A phone whos first function is music, pics, and video while the second function is placing calls. lol.

And an Xbox Phone (something I would buy in an instant) would have access to your “gamertag” for xbox live allowing you to see whos online and send them voice messages. The phone wouldn’t allow you to play xbox games but would allow you to play your xbox live arcade games you downloaded and be able to play with your friends over live on those. You would also be able to watch your videos and modify your account!

I’m just throwing out ideas here but if that xbox phone becomeas a reality and allows what I described, I would buy the phone reguardless of carrier!
JG

My sarcasm wasn’t helped by my html strikethrough not happening in the first comment…

I agree with Radium, if they built these things they might get some market traction, but we’ve been told time and time again they are not. Too bad.

40% share isn’t going to happen with WinMo. I think they should be quite happy with 13%.
James Burland

Oh my, Microsoft really must be living in some kind of parallel universe. They’ll be lucky to have 4% share by 2012!

Seriously; Symbian, Android and OSX will be the only three smartphone players by then.
Zak

I agree w/ Radium in the fact that an xbox phone would be pretty cool.

Regardless, I’d still pwn him in Halo
dumbwhore

This is like when Nokia declared that they would achieve 50% of the world phone market then kept puking out the same boring phones year after year. Don’t get me wrong, some Nokia phones are good, but you’ll never get 50% with an attitude like some phones are good.

Now, I have a Motorola Q and I really enjoy it. It’s ability to synchronize calendars over the air is pretty significant for me, but there are still just huge flaws. and for that matter, there are enormous hurdles for the iPhone. The screen is pretty but fashion only goes so far and I have NEVER seen someone listen to music on their iPhone. That’s why I don’t think a Zune phone will do any good either.

But let’s talk about reality here. There’s a good chance that Google will continue making inroads to smartphones. And Google’s dedicated to open interfaces because it’s the best way for them to make money.

I’d say it’s much more likely that some sort of ongoing hybrid will emerge. iPhones will be popular to the in crowd but will keep getting hacked by application owners. Windows mobile will continue to be the standard for business power user’s but Microsoft will continue to fail to sell what customer’s really need. So those customer’s will continue to load on pieces of software that add functionality, but also make them less stable and cost more. Google will continue to push their way onto all mobile devices and providing services cheaper and more effectively than the carriers themselves are capable of.