We in the tech press often get boggled down in the narrative that the future of computing will boil down to Apple versus Google but old Microsoft wants to set the record straight on where it stands.
In a blog post that also doubles as a muscle-flexing session, the software giant threw out a few numbers to put things in perspective.
What’s most interesting to us is that Microsoft says there were 8.8 million iPhones sold in the first quarter. That’s an impressive number, no doubt, but Nokia sold 21.5 million smartphones in the same period, while there were 55 million smartphones sold globally worldwide. This is small potatoes though, as the global market for smartphones in 2014 is expected to hit 439 million.
Microsoft doesn’t say it explicitly, but this future growth means that it has a decent shot at making Windows Phone 7 a success. The company may be a bit behind the iPhone and Android right now but it clearly thinks that it is in a good position for the future growth.
It may have a decent point too, as Windows Phone 7 looks pretty good and we could see it on some killer handsets in the not-too-distant future. What’s more, Microsoft has a content delivery ecosystem with Zune to be a strong competitor to Apple’s iTunes and it has the cloud infrastructure to go toe-to-toe with Google.
Microsoft doesn’t seem to be in as dire of straights as it’s often portrayed, it would seem.
Of course, numbers are only one dimension of a story. And we live in a hyper-competitive industry, with loads of challenges to go along with loads of opportunity. All the same, with Windows 7, Office 2010, Bing, Xbox 360, Kinect, Windows Phone 7, our cloud platform, and many other products, services and happy customers, 2010 is shaping up as a huge year for us.
What do you think of Microsoft’s chances in the mobile space going forward?
[Via Microsoft blog]