Statistical data from the market research firm Gartner has spelled doom for Microsoft in the upcoming years. Reports say that by 2016, the number of Android based devices will easily overtake the number of desktops running Microsoft Windows if the current trends continue.
As mentioned by Reuters, there will be almost 2.3 billion devices including tablets, smartphones and computers running Android as opposed to 2.28 billion Windows based devices. This comes in the wake of recent news that worldwide shipments of PCs have fallen by 8 percent, which have probably been cannibalized by the spurt in sales of tablets and smartphones.
Microsoft has been unable to leverage the potential of this market due to underwhelming response to the Windows Phone devices. It has managed to achieve only a 3 percent market share until now and going by the trends, the upcoming slew of releases aren’t expected to manage a miracle either. A major problem with the Windows Phone platform that has repeatedly occurred is the lack of backward compatibility. This happened before when it switched to Windows Phone 7 and it is happening again with Windows Phone 8. The company hasn’t allowed the ecosystem to grow into the new one and has often created a discontinuity when suddenly previous devices stop being compatible with the new version.
Google has been able to take advantage of the situation very well by offering a free and open source alternative on tablet and smartphone platforms. This strategy has allowed it to get a hold on the market very quickly ever since it jumped into the fray in 2008. Today it has the most number of users on smartphones and is the second best choice in the tablet market. If the company is able to put its act together in the tablet space, it can easily be said that they will be able to dominate the overall computing space in the coming years.
