IDC analysts have projected a 10.2% market share for Windows tablets by 2017 from 3% this year. This will be a big growth for Microsoft and its partners, but it won’t endanger the market share of Android or iOS in any way. IDC projects that Android and iOS will register slight dips in their market share by 2017.
In that year Android will reach a tablet market share of 58.8%, compared to the projected share of 60.8% this year. Meanwhile, iOS will reach 30.6% in 2017, a 5% decline from this year. The reason for Microsoft’s gain in share is that they’ll start to have more devices and aggressive pricing. However, there will be aspects that will still undermine the growth, such as device design, application issues and OS speed.
Windows 8 is taking too long to conquer the hearts of the public and this back and forth movement regarding its features (Start button for one) is not doing the OS any favours. The app ecosystem for Microsoft remains very week and MS is trying to create a unified system with apps for both tablets and laptops, but they’re failing at it miserably.
What the company needs is a big hit tablet, that could come from Nokia rather than the Surface series.
