Revisiting Gartner and IDC 2011 Predictions That Windows Phone Would Pass iOS in 2015

Bryan Chaffin, writing for The Mac Observer:

Let us harken back to 2011. The global economy was climbing its way out of the Great Recession of 2008. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, Part 2 was all the rage. Apple released iPad 2 and iPhone 4s, and of course, that was the year Steve Jobs died after many years of battling cancer.

It was also when Gartner and IDC both predicted that Microsoft’s Windows Phone would surpass Apple’s iPhone to become the world’s second biggest mobile platform. They both penciled in Research In Motion’s (now BlackBerry) BlackBerry for 4th place.

It was very, very hard for analysts who witnessed the ’80s and (especially) the ’90s to wrap their brains around the fact that Microsoft was going to lose an OS war. There was no good reason for anyone in 2011 to think Windows Phone was going to thrive other than a belief that “Microsoft always finds a way to win”.

(I hope to avoid the same trap with Apple.)

★ Wednesday, 6 January 2016