Can Microsoft sell 20 million Windows Mobile systems?

Angus Kidman
Wednesday, 02 May 2007 06:42

Opinion and Analysis

Microsoft claims that it wants to sell 20 million Windows Mobile licences over the next year. That sounds like an impressive number, but getting there will require major changes in the habits of phone users across the globe.


In a speech at the Mobile and Embedded Devices Conference in Las Vegas, MS VP Robbie Bach announced that Microsoft's sales of Windows Mobile have grown by 40 percent in 2006 -- a number he says makes it the fastest growing mobile OS around.

Never a company to indulge in hubris, Microsoft has said it wants to sell 20 million phones running Windows Mobile over the next financial year. Earlier in the week, CEO Steve Ballmer was quoted as saying that Microsoft would like to run on 60% of the phones in the world.

That might require some fairly radical market shifts. According to Gartner, one billion mobile phones in total were sold in 2006. Of those, just 81 million were expected to be smartphones, which represent the main target market for Windows Mobile. After all, if all you want to do is make calls, send some text messages and perhaps listen to music, you don't need a full-blown OS.

One recent positive development for Microsoft has been Research in Motion's announcement that its own email software will run on Windows Mobile devices. Given the BlackBerry's domination of the corporate push email space, that switch might make Windows Mobile devices more attractive for enterprise buyers. However, Microsoft still faces formidable competition from Symbian, the rival consortium which features most mobile phone manufacturers as members.